Often times, it’s the specific techniques that you’ll need to work on, in order to avoid plateauing in Jiu-Jitsu. However, sometimes you’ll find that the issue doesn’t lie within the details – but your overall BJJ game.
One of the most substantial culprits for the „suckiness“ of your game is that your Jiu-Jitsu is too passive. Luckily enough, you can notice this problem and solve it!
„IS MY BJJ GAME TOO PASSIVE?“
If you wish to continuously improve your BJJ, then it’s really important that you’re aware of what you are (and what you aren’t) doing. That is, if you aren’t thinking, you won’t notice the opportunities for improvement.
With that said, it’s easy to figure out if your Jiu-Jitsu is too passive or not. Just ask yourself, while you drill and roll: „What am I doing?“
That’s right! If the answer to that question is, basically, „not much“… If you spend a lot of time waiting on your training partner to engage first and you’re just sitting there; if you’re going through motions without any plan so as to what you want to achieve, and if you’re focused mostly on defense – then your BJJ needs a bit of adjusting.
„WHY DOES IT MATTER?“
You may be asking us: „Okay, but why does this matter? So I enjoy playing a passive game, but shouldn’t it be enough that I like training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?“
Of course, the most important thing is that you’re enjoying your BJJ journey. However, you can only enjoy it so much, before the lack of progress – instigated by your passivity – will take its toll.
Just compare it to someone who started a business. He/she may have a TON of passion for that line of work, and it seems as if they’re willing to do it for a long time. But if a couple of years pass and they aren’t making any money or if they aren’t getting any recognition off of it, then their motivation will dwindle and find its place in something else.
It’s the same thing with Jiu-Jitsu. You will stay fired up for training if you see results regularly enough.
And to breed consistent results, you can’t just sit and wait for your training partner to impose his/her game on you! You cannot always be on the defensive, reactive end. You have to get your own thing going, you’ve got to apply yourself and think about what you want to improve in.
Simply enough, if your grappling is too passive, both your progress and motivation for Jiu-Jitsu will falter. It’s time to make some changes.
„HOW DO I MAKE MY BJJ GAME LESS PASSIVE?“
There’s a lot of things that you could do to make your Jiu-Jitsu more aggressive, and you can read about some of them more in depth in this article. But here are three more things that you can do immediately.
1) Roll with a plan – before the roll starts, have an idea of what you want to work on during sparring. By having a goal that you’re working towards, you’ll evade getting stuck into the whole „I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’ll just let things take their course“ thing.
2) Don’t spend too much time in one position. Try a submission or to set something else up. If that fails, transition to another position immediately. This’ll get you used to always being on the move and to always thinking about your next step.
3) Drill with more intensity – apply yourself fully and pay attention to every single rep that you do. This will also improve your conditioning by heaps and bounds!
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