What’s one of the most common mistakes that BJJ coaches and academy owners make?
Well, Fabio Gurgel talks from immense experience when he says that one such mistake is focusing too much on competition.
Here’s why, as he explained in an interview for BJJEE:
Because, if in your class you focus too much on the competition group, then you’re actually spelling out all of the other people that would love to learn BJJ – those who cannot keep up with the training sessions of competitors, because of their knowledge and their pace.
That’s what happened in Brazil, actually, and it’s what often happens in Europe today:
This is something that has happened in Brazil in the 90’s, as I said, something due to which the academies were getting smaller as less people came in to train because the environment in the academies was bad.
Today, this is something that I see happening in Europe…With this sort of an approach, your base of students gets smaller and therefore you don’t get as many people training in the academy – nor do you find any potential talents for competition, as they cannot even start training in the first place!
Gurgel shares an example out of his legendary Alliance Jiu Jitsu Team:
Alliance has 30.000 students. And when the largest competitions take place, even then the number of competitors from our team – that go to the tournament – amounts to 1% of the total number of our students.
1% of our students are competitors. So, if you focus only on your competitors, you will not have a lot of people training in your academy.
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Make sure to read our entire interview with Fabio Gurgel on the following link.
Evolve Your Guard With The Sit Up Guard Explained Like Never Before, From Coral Belt Legend Fabio Gurgel. Follow Along As He Explains How To Create A Dynamic Sit-Up Guard You Can Use To Sweep And Attack!
- Use this guard to sweep up from bottom with pendulum sweeps, X guard options, cross sleeve attacks, and much more.
- Fabio Gurgel is one of the of the most influential grappling coaches in the world, and he shows you why so many champions regard him as critical to their success on the mat.
