Ever wonder what influence your instructor will have in the long term over your Jiu Jitsu? If you will become technically similar to him, perhaps have the same or better success? In this article we will discuss some ways in which your instructor will influence you and your Jiu Jitsu game in the long term.

• Your instructor will likely teach some techniques more than other. This is normal thing and every instructor will prefer some techniques over the other. He is teaching those because he can give you more technical details on them and make you more efficient at them. For example some teachers will go more into some types of guards than the others. Even so, he should still teach techniques from a much larger spectrum than his own gameplan, even if maybe with not the same frequency.
• He will help you understand the inner workings of Jiu Jitsu. Your instructor will teach you the fundamental principles in Jiu Jitsu. It’s these principles that will help you understand how your body, and the opponent’s body actually work. He should teach you grips, postural fundamentals,
• He will help you create a gameplan. Your teacher will help you put the foundations of your gameplan down. This is not an easy process to do for a beginner, as you need to assess your strengths and weaknesses. Your instructor will most likely already know that and help you structure a game plan that relies on your favorite moves. Eventually, he will make you understand how to create the gameplan yourself, how to adapt it to your requirements and how to train for it.

Figure 1. Example of a gameplan. Make sure you talk to your instructor about yours.

• Training methodology. When you will start to progress in your Jiu Jitsu journey you will start to see that there is so much more when it comes to training effectively than you would of thought at first. For example, for a newcomer training just means showing up to the session and doing whatever the instructor shows then going home. But as you advance, you will want to learn how to program your sessions accordingly for effectiveness. You will learn how to choose your techniques for that session, how and when to do positional sparring, how to use periodization for your sessions, all important concepts when it comes to increasing your progression rate.
• He will teach you critical thinking. Jiu Jitsu is a sport that demands and relies on critical thinking. Being a very detail oriented sport, critical thinking is absolutely required in order to be any good at it. What does critical thinking actually mean in this context? It means you should always look at techniques at the deepest levels of details possible and always try to see if there is something wrong with it, can be improved or is not a good technique at all. Always consider the what-if scenarios when learning a technique. Always try to understand the techniques shown from a detail perspective. Hand placement, hip orientation, elbow placement and grips are just a few of the aspects you have to really pay attention to.

• Most importantly, he will give you the freedom and tools required to go on your own path. A very important aspect of teaching is giving the student the tools required to create their own style and their own view of Jiu Jitsu. Not every student will have the same attributes as the teacher. Not every student will choose to become a master at the same techniques as his teacher. Even if they do, they might want to go a slightly different route and put another spin on those same techniques. That is why it’s very important for instructors to give the fundamentals and build a solid base of knowledge, technique and critical thinking, so that the student can eventually learn to develop his own game, his own techniques, know how to address his weak points, etc.
• He will make you want to teach. Although this is not always the case, a teacher will inspire you to at least try teaching Jiu Jitsu. Sharing knowledge, helping others and contributing to their progress is something beautiful and chances are you will want to have a similar influence on other people, as your instructor had on you.

5x World BJJ champion Bernardo Faria has developed the No Gi Half Guard. His submissions and sweeps works just as easily for No Gi, if not easier.
1.In No Gi there are not as many grips you can play. For example, you can’t play spider guard and the whole array of guards that stem from it. His guard works perfectly.
2.There are not a lot of grips your opponent can use to stop your sweep while playing No Gi. They can’t grab your collar, sleeve or pants obviously. Again, his guard works perfectly.