In BJJ there's something called Butterfly Guard...
Some of you know where I'm going with this already;)
You learn it in class, and it seems amazing.
You're supposed to put your legs between your opponent's legs (which assumes he's dumb enough to stand/squat totally square to you and just pause), then there's a whole assortment of ways to knock him off-balance, including cirque-de-soleil-esque ones where you toss the guy in the air, use one foot to rotate him 180 degrees before he lands, then take his back.
Know what usually happens in real life when white belts try to use butterfly guard? The opponent stuffs both of your legs between his legs, and mounts you like a steed.
That's how I've felt, for many years, about the quintuplet.
It's a practice-pad exercise. An abstraction. You hear people like Jeff "Tain" Watts seem to "stretch time" with quintuplets, or quintuplet-like rhythms, but good luck nailing one in the wild.
Instead of using the quint (sorry - I needed a slick abbreviation) like a modern art project, he used it as a metric modulation device.
"I always wanted to play in five, but I kept having to play in four on all the gigs I was doing," Joel said at a recent clinic. "With quintuplets, I could play in five any time I wanted."
Which beings us to this week's lesson. It's not about "licks". It's about the feeling of playing in 5 whilst you're keeping the 4 in your head.
And this week's lesson gives you an easy way to do that.
Grab the transcription here.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the end of the butterfly guard story, the analogy holds: it's most useful to think of butterfly guard as a way to get to other positions, rather than as a finishing point.
Enjooooooy:)