he says how he likes to break things down on his instructionals and I think it's indicative of how he thinks about things. I think he takes a very physics based approach, and looks a lot at things from a structural, engineering, and physics perspective. In many ways very scientific. You can really tell he ventures more into those ideas on his final sets, the open elbow and the defensive guard. He talks a lot more conceptually on those sets about the physics of how keeping an elbow open makes someone weaker, or how on defensive guard you should rely on your skeletal structure to keeps walls and frames between you and your opponent. He's good at knowing the critical aspects at every stage of a technique or sequence that are needed to make it work. I heard one of Marcelo's black belts say he's the best late stage defense guy they ever rolled with because he knows exactly how and to remove or prevent a successful ingredient at the last second.
What I don't think people talks about as much is that he really seems to be connected with the art part of martial arts as well. For example K. Florian, J. Glover, J. Rader, and F. Zahabi all say he's the most artisitc/creative grappler they know. He is very open minded and never limits himself into thinking within the confines of what grappling should be like, or look like. For example he will do things I don't see many people doing like using his feet to pin people's wrist to the mat to keep them stretched apart from knee on belly or other top positions.
Most people wouldn't think to do that, but it fits in with the idea of keeping someone's elbow open and keeping them pinned. It's out of the box but he's open minded so whether it's that or something else, just because it looks strange or people might say it's not "high percentage" doesn't mean he's not willing to take the time to find out. I've noticed he's able to make a lot of things work that people say shouldn't work. He also was blending folkstyle wrestling ideas with jiu-jitsu ideas before it became fashionable.
Finally he seems to openly question authority and institutions. I remember when he said the conventional shrimp didn't work about 10 years ago and everyone was losing their shit. He went on to show a better shrimp and technical stand up on the defensive guard set and it made more sense once he showed it. But he's never been afraid to tell anyone or even everyone that they're wrong. Or if they're not wrong that they're at least not thinking about things in a way that they should. One thing he's said a lot is "Even if I can't prove it with my skillset yet, I'm believe that *insert idea here* is wrong or incomplete and there's a better way."
So TLDR: He's very scientifically minded. Very artistic. Very open to questioning long-standing institutions.
