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Whether it be Jiu Jitsu or some other activity, you want to make sure you are getting the most out of your practice. You want to see your skill increasing without feeling like it's taking forever. However, there is no magic pill for these types of things. To see a bigger difference in your results, the focus needs to be on organizing your thoughts and training times. For the most part, a lot of this is based on repetition and experimenting. You won't find the answer you are looking for right away, so it’s important to develop patience. Take your time and enjoy the process of learning and getting better.
HOURS TRAINING
The most obvious way to see your Jiu Jitsu skill increase is by how many hours you are putting into your Jiu Jitsu training. How much you feel you are receiving is sometimes a direct relation to how much effort you are putting in. If you are only training once a week or once every two weeks, you are not going to progress at a super fast rate. The amount of time you spend coming into class and logging in your hours will make a massive change to your success in Jiu Jitsu. I tell my students all the time that the basic formula to be great at Jiu Jitsu requires you to remember your mistakes, help out your training partners, follow the structured curriculum and show up to class.
THOUGHTS
How you think can directly affect your mood, attitude, performance and so forth. Plateauing is a term a lot of people use in Jiu Jitsu and other sports. It means to reach a level of little to no growth or decline; not progressing. In my years of Jiu Jitsu training I have heard that used countless times as to why someone is not improving currently in their Jiu Jitsu practice. First and foremost, the minute that term ‘plateau’ is used, you are telling yourself that your brain just put on the brakes. It mentally stops the ability for you to figure out the problem. I firmly believe that there is always improvement happening therefore you are not plateauing. It’s just not always that obvious. Perceiving it this way is what allowed me to constantly improve and go from white belt to purpose belt in less than two and a half years. What you tell yourself in your mind is very important. Constantly making excuses or creating negative thoughts is a very easy habit to develop and way to common among many people. When you catch yourself making an excuse or thinking negatively, try to catch yourself and swap it out with a positive, motivating thought. Take the time to reflect on yourself, your practice and your thoughts in order to find the answers you need to improve.
LEVEL OF FOCUS
Two hours of full concentration will always be better and more productive than four hours of mindless, flickering bouts of attention. It’s more than just tallying up the hours spent training Jiu Jitsu. It’s about how well you use the hours that you have. Most students get caught up in the “count” while bragging to training partners or friends about the total amount of time they trained in a day. Sometimes the numbers sound crazy, however it is very unlikely that all the hours were done with full, undivided attention. It is understandable how it can feel like a badge of honor to show how long your practices are but we must trade this in for a better perspective; one that is focused on making every minute of training as productive as possible (especially if you are limited in hours to train Jiu Jitsu). As your concentration skill gets better, this is when increasing your hours is appropriate to do. Only increase the hours by the amount of time you can continue to concentrate.
What type of training are you doing?
How are you breaking up your training?
These few points are just scratching the surface! The devil is in the details. This post is to help you begin to reflect on your current Jiu Jitsu training, assess what you may be lacking in and help guide you through the first important improvements needed.
Check out our Jiu Jitsu YouTube channel where we have plenty of content regarding techniques, concepts, workouts and more! We do this so the viewer, the student, can maximize their progression and get more fulfillment out of their Jiu Jitsu experience.