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These Proven Ways Will Help You Achieve Your BJJ Goals

These Proven Ways Will Help You Achieve Your BJJ Goals

Guest post by James Duscio, a BJJ black belt under Walter Cascao Vital. He runs Cascao Evolution BJJ out of Las Vegas nv.

Not enough people progress or grow in life, and one reason for that is their lack of goal setting. Many people just live life in a very passive way, and there are some pro’s to that, but you will often find that these same people are in the very same spot in life that they were in a year ago, and even a year before that.

To progress in BJJ you need to do more then just show up to class and blindly follow your instructors lead and just battle it out with you training partners. We are in an art that requires thinking, techniques, planning, strategy and tactics. That means that the more energy you put into planning, thinking, techniques, strategy and tactics, the more you will get out of this art. Goal setting is a perfect tool to apply to your new year.

Assess where you are in your BJJ today.

Be realistic and think where you want to be by the end of the year. Make a game plan and execute it. It also helps to create sub goals that bring you towards your end goal. These sub goals act as check points as well as giving us extra motivation to keep moving forward.

A perfect example is somebody that wants to improve their guard game. That is a very general statement and not really a goal, it’s a wish and with out specifics or a game plan it will remain a wish. A better approach is making a list of what you need to accomplish this goal:

– Break their posture
– Sweep them
– Submit them
– Stop their passes

So maybe the first month is all about posture breaking. Because posture control is the first must do from bottom guard. Figure out what posture controlling techniques you like and for 75% of your rolls put yourself in bottom guard and execute your game plan. After class evaluate what went right and what went wrong. Ask your training partners or your instructor what your doing wrong and then even do a little bit of your own research as well. By the end of the month you will have put yourself in that bottom guard scenario over 100 times. You will see what the most common reactions and defenses are to your game plan and you will slowly expand. So the next month will be re-countering their defenses. By month three you will be adding your sweeps by the same method and 6 months in submissions are now in the mix.

Some of the best practitioners are a master of a just a small handful of techniques and positions. It’s important for us to have a large array of knowledge, but with what we actually use 90% of the time, it’s the handful of techniques and tactics that we have put the most time and energy into. Ronda Rousey’s arm bar, Damian Maia’s rear naked choke, Palhares and his heel hooks, Ryan Hall with his triangle chokes, Dean Lister and his ankle locks, Marcela Garcia with his guillotine chokes, and the list goes on.

The bottom line is asses your game, figure out the long term direction you want to go towards, make some long term goals and short sub goals, and execute it. Training with a purpose with increase the speed and quality of your progression in our art. Also, communicate with your instructer so he can help you towards your goals. OOSSSS

Travis Stevens advises to put your goals down on paper:

Hard work and dedication are things you have to train like anything else! The funny part is most people think they work very hard. So let me ask you this; Have you set your overall goals for 2018? Have you written them down yet?

If the answer is no ask yourself if your truly motivated to accomplishing anything in 2018? Having things floating around inside your head while they may be good ideas the first step to accomplishing them is putting them down on paper! Do yourself a favor this year and track your goals. Just by writing them down and looking at them daily or weekly will help drive you to accomplishing them this year. Don’t fall short you can accomplish more than you think!

Mr Jiu-Jitsu, be 100% obsessed with your goals:

Strengthen your mind and learn how to get the right mindset for BJJ success from world champion black belt Bernardo Faria.

  • Use these mental exercises and answers to common problems that Bernardo developed for huge success in training and tournament day.