Gaileen Sutton

LEARNING FAST is important for every BJJ student. If you’ve been taking classes for any length of time, you’ll quickly find a deep need to get better faster. You know some moves – a submission, a sweep – and it’s frustrating when you aren’t able to use them on your classmates. You can train for hours and hours, but you’re not progressing quickly.

Here is the solution, and don’t worry, it is not about mastering a new awesome submission or unbeatable guard that the other jiu jitsu students won’t already know about. To really get better you need to train with a purpose.

As you’ve undoubtedly heard before, if you do not make a plan you will not succeed. So to get better, make a plan, WRITE THE PLAN DOWN, and every day take a step towards reaching that plan. You should not deviate from your plan until your reach your goal. Remember: PUT YOUR PLAN IN WRITING! You must believe me about this!

For many jiu jitsu students, the plan is to “get good at guard” or “get good at submissions”. While this is a good start, you have to drill down and be much more specific. A more concrete goal would be something like “keep side control for at least 15 seconds on every opponent”. Another would be “Bump sweep each partner”. You will be able to measure your success and take actions toward meeting the goals. By setting small goals, you’ll quickly be able to reach your larger goals.

It’s time to mentally enter the BJJ arena. Develop a plan, a plan just for you, and work to meet your goals. Begin each training session with a reminder of the goal you set and make it come true. You are not going to be better instantaneously, and patience will still be required, however you will get there! After you attain a few of your smaller goals, you will recognize your success and you will ask yourself why you didn’t start doing this sooner.

While John normally sells used cars Houston, he loves to practice martial arts and lives that passion. Just remember to give him a shout if you are ever looking for used autos Houston!