Learn the Rules Before You Break Them: What Picasso Can Teach Us About MMA

“Learn the rules like a Pro, so you can break them like an Artist.”— Pablo Picasso

I've always liked this quote, and I think it applies surprisingly well to MMA.

At first glance, it might seem like the quote is encouraging you to ignore conventional technique. Do whatever you want. Be unpredictable. Don't worry about fundamentals. Find your own style.

I think that's the exact opposite of what it means.

In MMA, you need to understand the rules before you can intelligently break them. You need to understand the fundamentals, the principles behind them, and the problems they're designed to solve. Only then can you begin to recognize when a conventional solution isn't the best solution for a particular situation.

There is a huge difference between breaking a rule because you don't know it and breaking a rule because you understand it.

The Rules Exist for a Reason

Every martial art has fundamentals and conventions that exist because they generally work.

Maintain your balance. Protect your head. Don't overextend your punches. Control inside position. Keep your base. Don't give up your back unnecessarily. Manage distance. Keep your hands in a useful position. Don't expose your neck. Maintain good posture.

A beginner needs these rules.

Not because every one of them is an absolute law that can never be violated, but because beginners don't yet have enough experience to understand the consequences of violating them.

If I tell a new student to keep their hands up, I'm not claiming that a fighter must keep both hands glued to their face every second of every fight. I'm teaching them a starting position that provides reasonable protection while allowing them to develop the other skills necessary to fight.

If I tell someone not to give their back, I'm not saying that giving your back is never appropriate. I'm teaching them that voluntarily giving an opponent access to your back creates a significant problem that they need to understand before they start experimenting with it.

The fundamental is the starting point.

The understanding comes later.

The Best Fighters Don't Always Look Textbook

Watch enough high-level MMA and you'll eventually see fighters doing things that would look wrong if you judged them against a beginner's checklist.

They drop their hands. They stand differently. They use unusual stances. They give ground when conventional advice says to pressure. They pressure when conventional advice says to create distance. They give up positions that you're normally told never to give up. They throw techniques from strange angles or deliberately create situations that appear dangerous.

If all you know is the fundamental rule, some of these things look like mistakes. If you understand the game, you can start seeing the logic behind them. That's the important distinction.

An inexperienced fighter might drop their hand because they don't understand the danger of leaving their head exposed. An experienced fighter might drop their hand because they know it will encourage a particular reaction from their opponent.

The physical action can look exactly the same. The understanding behind the action is completely different. One is a mistake. The other can be a strategy.

MMA Punishes Rigid Thinking

This becomes especially important in MMA because MMA is not a closed system. Your opponent is constantly changing the problem. You may have a technically sound striking position, but your opponent changes distance. You may establish inside control, but they change their angle. You may have a dominant grappling position, but they begin creating a scramble. You may have a game plan, but your opponent refuses to cooperate with it.

You can't simply memorize the correct answer to every situation because your opponent is allowed to change the question.

That's why good MMA requires principles rather than rigid sequences. You need to understand what you're trying to accomplish, why a particular technique works, and what you should do when the opponent prevents you from doing it.

This is one of the reasons that simply collecting techniques isn't enough. Knowing ten different ways to perform a takedown doesn't necessarily make you a better wrestler. Knowing twenty submissions doesn't necessarily make you a better grappler.

You need to understand the problems those techniques solve.

Once you understand the problem, you can start finding your own solutions.

The Fundamentals Aren't Supposed to Disappear

This is where I think the Picasso quote is often misunderstood.

You don't learn fundamentals so that you can eventually stop using them. You learn them so thoroughly that you understand when they matter, when they don't, and what you're giving up when you deviate from them.

Take stance as an example. A beginner needs to learn how to maintain a balanced MMA stance. They need to understand weight distribution, mobility, striking, defense, and the threat of the takedown.

An experienced fighter might intentionally change their stance to bait a takedown, create a striking opportunity, make themselves difficult to hit, or manipulate an opponent's reactions. They aren't ignoring the importance of stance. They're using their understanding of stance to accomplish something.

The same thing happens everywhere in MMA. A fighter may deliberately accept a position that would normally be considered dangerous because doing so creates an opportunity somewhere else. They may put themselves in a position that appears technically imperfect because the opponent's reaction makes the trade worthwhile.

But they need to understand the cost. That's the part beginners often miss. When you break a fundamental, you're usually accepting some kind of risk or giving something up in exchange for another advantage. Experienced fighters understand that tradeoff. Beginners often don't.

You Have to Earn the Right to Break the Rules

This is one reason I don't think beginners should be in a hurry to become unconventional.

A new student often wants to do the creative stuff first. They want spinning attacks, flying submissions, unusual guards, tricky setups, unconventional movement, and techniques that look different from what everyone else is doing.

There's nothing wrong with any of those things. But creativity without understanding is usually just randomness. If you don't understand distance, throwing an unconventional kick doesn't make you creative. If you don't understand balance, using unusual movement doesn't make you innovative. If you don't understand positional control, using an unconventional submission setup doesn't make you an expert.

You need a foundation before you can meaningfully depart from it. Once you understand the standard solution, you can begin experimenting with alternatives. Once you've experimented enough, you may discover that the "rule" you were following isn't actually an absolute rule at all. It's a principle that works most of the time, with exceptions that become useful in the right circumstances.

That's where real creativity begins.

Experience Changes What the Rules Mean

One of the interesting things about martial arts is that you can explain a fundamental to someone in five minutes, but it can take years to actually understand it.

A beginner might learn, "Keep your head off the center line." An experienced fighter understands that this is not an absolute commandment. It's a principle about managing the risk of being hit cleanly. There are situations where you may deliberately put your head on the center line because you're trying to accomplish something else. The difference is that the experienced fighter understands the tradeoff.

The same applies to grappling. "Don't give your back" is good advice. But there are situations where giving your back momentarily may be the correct decision because you're trying to escape, stand up, reverse position, or create a scramble. The person who doesn't understand the principle may give their back because they don't know better. The experienced fighter may give their back because they know exactly what they're trying to create.

From the outside, those two actions can look identical. From the inside, they are completely different.

This Is Why MMA Training Has to Be More Than Technique

A technique is a solution to a problem. If all you learn is the solution, you don't necessarily learn the problem. You need to understand why the technique works, what makes it work, how your opponent can disrupt it, and what you should do when they do. That's why development can't simply be about showing students more and more techniques.

Early in your training, you need a foundation of reliable principles and fundamental skills. You need enough repetition that those skills become increasingly automatic. Then you need progressive resistance and increasingly complicated problems that force you to make decisions.

Eventually, you stop simply executing techniques. You start solving problems.

That is a major transition in martial arts development. The beginner asks, "What technique do I use here?" The more experienced fighter begins asking, "What is happening, what is my opponent trying to do, and what can I do to change the situation?"

That is a much more powerful way to understand MMA.

There Is a Difference Between Technique and Style

This is also where individual style begins to emerge. You shouldn't have to manufacture a style. Your style should develop from your understanding of the game, your physical attributes, your experiences, and the things you're particularly good at.

Two fighters can understand exactly the same fundamental principles and use them completely differently. One may become a pressure fighter. Another may prefer to counter. One may build their game around wrestling and top control. Another may use striking to create grappling opportunities. One may be comfortable fighting at long range while another wants to make everything happen in the clinch.

They don't need to abandon the fundamentals to become individuals. They need to understand the fundamentals deeply enough to apply them in ways that fit their game.

That's the difference between having a style and simply doing something different.

The Goal Isn't to Break Rules

Ultimately, I don't think the goal of MMA training should be to break rules. The goal is to understand principles.

Rules are useful because they simplify complicated problems for people who are still learning. They give you reliable starting points. They help you build good habits and avoid unnecessary mistakes.

But eventually, you need to understand what is underneath the rule.

• Why do we want inside position?

• Why do we care about balance?

• Why do we protect certain positions?

• Why do we manage distance?

• Why do we keep our head off the center line?

• Why does a particular movement create a particular reaction?

Once you understand those things, you aren't trapped by the exact technique you were originally taught. You can adapt. And that is essential in MMA.

Learn First. Experiment Second.

I think this is ultimately what Picasso's quote means for a martial artist.

First learn what works. Then understand why it works. Then practice applying it against resistance. Then experiment.

Try different approaches. Test different reactions. Find out what happens when you change the timing, angle, distance, or position. Discover what works for you against different types of opponents.

Eventually, you may find yourself doing something that looks completely different from the textbook version. That's okay.

If you understand what you're doing, what problem you're solving, what risk you're accepting, and why it works against the opponent in front of you, you're no longer simply ignoring the fundamentals. You're applying them at a higher level.

That's when technique starts becoming skill, and skill starts becoming style.

Learn the rules like a professional. Understand the principles behind them. Then, when the situation demands it, have the knowledge and experience to break them like an artist.