Master The Fundamentals
There’s a lot of hype out there about the latest moves or techniques. It only takes one good submission on YouTube before half your lower belts are trying to land it in class. If you want to get good fast, you need to put the time in to master the fundamentals. Roger Gracie submitted the best competitors in the world over and over again with a cross collar choke from mount. He spent ten years developing this as an unstoppable technique. It was not fancy, it was not fast or explosive. It was slow, controlled and methodical. The reality is before you train inversions, rolling knee bars, and heel hooks, you need to understand basic body mechanics, be able break and pass guard, control your opponent from side control and mount, escape bad positions, learn sweeps from multiple positions, know how to retain guard and pull off basic submissions cleanly. There’s an old saying in jiu jitsu, “position before submission.” If you want to dominate your opponents, win and control the position.
Emulate Top Athletes
A sure fire way to fast track your improvement in the sport is to study the game of top athletes that are similar to you in physicality and athleticism. For example, if you are small and stocky, the spider guard is probably not going to be your most advantageous game. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend time getting good at this position, but your time is going to be better spent learning from top players with your body type. Try to find competitors or classmates like you that have developed strategies and study how they have built their game.
Build a Focused Game
Getting really good isn’t about knowing every move in jiu jitsu and dazzling opponents with the latest craze in the sport. If you want to control and dominate your opponents, master a small subset of techniques that work really well for you. This applies at the highest levels. You can go down the list of top athletes in the sports and they are often synonymous with mastery of specific moves and techniques: Marcelo Garcia = butterfly guard, Leandro Lo = knee cut, Roger Gracie = full guard / cross collar choke, Bernardo Faria = half guard / smash pass, Leo Nogeuira = deep half guard / Sao Paulo pass, Keenan Cornelius = lapel guard. You get the point. These are all masters of the game, but they developed specific skills that became unstoppable and opened up all the other tools in their toolkits.
Train Both Gi and No-Gi
It is almost controversial to recommend this with the exploding popularity of no-Gi grappling, but it is no coincidence that most of the top competitors at ADCC and the recent CJI tournaments are accomplished Gi athletes. No-Gi is exciting as it lends itself to athleticism, explosive movements, and up tempo competition. Physical prowess can take you a long way in no-Gi competition, even if your technique is sloppy. Conversely, the game slows down in Gi jiu jitsu, and it is very difficult to win with poor technique. For this reason, if you want to get better fast, train both styles. You’ll learn how to win with technique with the Gi on, and you’ll learn to apply it a high intensity effectively when you take the Gi off.
Train with Intention
Enter your sparring sessions with goals. Hammer the techniques you are working to master even if that means you get tapped out by your partner. If you are a lower belt, spend more than half your time sparring with more advanced belts. This will force you to focus your game and discover techniques and positions that work for you. Additionally, you’ll be able to feel what is happening to you and pick up pointers that will help you improve. If you are an upper belt, you should spend more than half your time training with lower belts. This will give you the opportunity to develop new aspects of your game with a much lower risk of submission. Often times when you get two equally experienced grapplers, the game narrows to your best techniques, which can impede your development of new moves and sequences. Master them on less skillful opponents and then migrate those moves into your repertoire with advanced training partners.
Maintain Consistency
Consistency is king. Develop a training schedule that works for your lifestyle and stick to it, whether is 2, 3, 5 times per week or even multiple sessions per day. You have to find balance, so you don’t burn out. It takes time, patience and failure to develop a really strong game. Getting there requires consistency and commitment. Judge your progress based upon what you put into the sport, rather than by the rate of progress of others.
Drop In Other Gyms
Training at other gyms is a great way to measure your progress and evaluate the quality of instruction you are receiving. It will also enable you to get new looks from people you’ve not been training with often or at all. This is important in your development, as we often times train with the same partners day in and day out, and learn their games almost as good as our own. This can make your training predictable and put you in a comfort zone that can slow your overall advancement in the sport.
Get Private Lessons Regularly
Getting private lessons or splitting a private lesson with someone else is a chance to work specifically on your game with an instructor. They can asses your specific strengths and weaknesses so you can maximize your training time. Not only can it expedite your technical development but also they can help you develop an overall strategy based on what you're good at. That in itself can be hugely valuable. Not just fixing techniques but telling you how to apply your overall game for better success. These can range in price so find someone that’s in your price range or work out a deal by splitting the cost with a training partner if the instructor allows it.
Compete
Competition will absolutely get you out of your comfort zone. It will expose holes in your game while also rewarding you for the techniques you have mastered. You will also benefit incredibly from the focus and conditioning that you develop during the preparation for competition.
Train On Your Feet
Jiu jitsu is notorious for starting every sparring round on your knees. The reality is that almost all self defense situations start on your feet. You need to learn how to control your opponent standing up, how to defend and counter take downs. Likewise, all tournaments start with the stand up game. A strong stand up game will give you an advantage over most opponents, allowing you to establish a dominant position in your match. Additionally, there’s nothing like the cardio you get from starting on your feet.
Optimize Your Lifestyle
Living a thoughtful lifestyle to complement your training regimen will help you improve quickly. Develop a regimen that keeps you in class instead of a way from class. Be mindful of proper nutrition to help your performance and recovery. Grappling sports require a unique combination of power and endurance. They require and develop work capacity and stamina. Supplements can help you achieve peak performance and protect your body. We recommend you integrate products like a good protein, collagen, essential amino acids and creatine into your regimen. Maintain a proper level of hydration with essential electrolytes to support your performance needs. Likewise, weaning yourself off stimulants like caffeine or pre-workout products will also help improve your performance. You need calm, focused energy that can help you learn and retain techniques while also giving you the endurance to stay mentally strong under duress and execute techniques with precision. We developed Grapple Science Cognition specifically to improve the performance of grappling athletes. It will help you focus, give you energy, improve your mood, and enhance your nitric oxide production. Grapple Science Cognition will help you get better faster. Check it out.
About The Author
GW is one of the Grapple Science Founders. He was also the cofounder of Kill Cliff performance beverages and is a second degree Blackbelt under Roberto Traven. He was an avid BJJ competitor winning over 40 gold medals including Master Worlds twice and the Pan Ams 7 times among other IBJJF tournaments. He started his grappling experience as a high school wrestler which led to BJJ and also years of strength and conditioning training. He led Kill Cliff’s early expansion into CrossFit and BJJ sponsoring the CrossFit Games and building a Pro sponsored BJJ team which included athletes like Lucas Lepri and Mackenzie Dern. This eventually lead to the sponsorship of the Kill Cliff Fight Club; one of the most successful and dominant fight teams in professional MMA. GW is currently coaching BJJ and CrossFit at Team Octopus in Atlanta.
