I’m not perfect and nobody is BJJ black belt or otherwise, but whether you want it or not having a high rank in BJJ gives you significant influence in your students’ lives. So while you may not have your life together, what you can do is one thing better everyday. That goes for all people, but I think it’s more measurable in BJJ. One more round, one more rep, one less drink, one less junk snack, make your life better by one thing everyday. I may not have everything together, but I do know that making small changes everyday will lead to accomplishing a task or a goal. Get after it!

Most people train in pain. Part of doing BJJ is consistent lingering aches. So how do you balance taking care of yourself with getting better? I would say if the pain you are in is hindering your daily life, it’s probably good to take a day off. Maintenance training is only 3 days a week, so if you can make that, most likely you won’t lose any skill. It’s okay to rest if you feel like you need to, but if you use the pain as an excuse, it’ll be hard to improve.

Beginning Jiu Jitsu as an adult is a weird endeavor. Mainly because of how martial arts in this country are perceived. If you spend 4 years doing most martial arts, you’d probably be a black belt, but 4 years in BJJ is likely a blue belt. Even now when you say you do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, people make karate noises, think you do capoeira, or compare you to a child relative. One of the things that comes with training is realizing that most of the world is ignorant to our niche activity, and if they choose to not become educated, it’s not your issue. By experience I can tell you it’s just easier sometimes to let it go.

When you want to sweep someone one of the things a lot of people miss is getting the glutes off the heels. Whether it’s waiting for them to lift themself trying to move, or forcing them to leave their seza base point, it is necessary to get people off their heels if you want to perform an effective sweep. Try to kneel and hover your hips over your heels, it takes a lot of effort to maintain that balance. The rate at which you sweep people will increase if you can create that situation for the people you’re rolling against.

If I can make one recommendation for work to do outside of class to make your Jiu-Jitsu better, it’s work on your core. Make your abs and back strong. When I first started BJJ, my instructor was really fond of 1/2 hour warmups with a minimum 500 abs. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the more I rolled with people who didn’t go through that rigorous conditioning, the more I understood it. The stronger you make your core muscles, the longer you’re able to play guard, hold posture, and roll in general. The nice part of this is you don’t need equipment or a partner, and it will make a difference.

I’ve talked about chaos as an important part of successful implementation of Jiu-Jitsu, but I think danger runs parallel to chaos in how well your BJJ works. How do you use danger to make your grappling better? Always threaten attacks. It’s why a full body submission system is very effective. It gives you options no matter what position you’re in. If you can put some on the back foot by threatening danger from the outset, you are going to succeed a fair amount of time. In competition, the first person to score points is statistically more likely to win the match. I would say a lot of that is psychological. As soon as you retreat to less than 50% of the offense the likelihood you will be defeated grows exponentially. Make people worried about how dangerous you are and they become less dangerous to you.