It’s not easy to sustain progress on the mats once you become a more intermediate BJJ student. Rather, you now have to put in extra effort into your training, rather than just show up… And you’ll need to become much more aware of how well you’re doing and how good your techniques actually are.
Demian Maia shares 4 things that all intermediate BJJ students need to do in order to continue improving in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

4 THINGS FOR INTERMEDIATE BJJ STUDENTS

Maia emphasizes that, first of all, you ought to focus on transitions and timing. Now is the time to start practicing your transitions from one technique to another, to start thinking of techniques in “batches”; and to try and “propel” yourself into the future, by thinking what you’ll do if a certain technique (or two) fails.
This will also require you to really get the timing down, as your successes won’t just depend on the proficiency of your technique; but on the worth of your timing as well.

Secondly, you should try to teach others. By teaching your training partners (perhaps help out your fellow white belts?) how to perform a technique properly, you’ll gain a much deeper understanding of it and what makes it work.
Which, actually, leads us to the third piece of Maia’s advice – which is to ask “why” as often as possible. Asking this question should become second nature to you, if your quest is to truly understand the inner workings of the Gentle Art.

And finally, even if you don’t have any professional aspirations, you should compete as often as possible. By competing, you’ll figure out if you’re really that good as it seems to you in training… Or if (and which) there are holes in your game to fix.

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