Written by Felipe Grez, BJJ black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Michelle Nicolini. Felipe runs jiujitsukingdom.com academy in Australia.

One issue a lot of white and blue belts often struggle with is a lack of “Confidence” in their knowledge and understanding of the Jiu Jitsu game… So many times I will see a student think about and start to execute a technique, only to hesitate and abandon it prematurely thinking that it would never work on “That” person! When in reality if they had just committed to the movement and trusted both themselves and their technique, they would have had a whole lot more success and learnt more too!

One of the untold secrets of Jiu Jitsu is that whether you are actually able to make the technique work perfectly or not is not always that important… It is the act of trying, learning the timing, developing confidence and general movement skills that will greatly accelerate your learning curve! You have to believe in the technique and your ability to execute it no matter who the opponent or training partner that you are rolling with!

Roger Gracie has total confidence in his cross choke from the mount.

As the great Ice Hockey Legend, Wayne Gretzky says “You Miss 100% of the Shots that You Don’t Take”! So take some risks, move, try to execute your techniques, succeed, FAIL! Yes I said fail and learn why you failed and how to succeed next time. Did I doubt myself, hesitate and not commit? Was my timing off? Did I execute the technique correctly, was it the right technique to use and how could I adapt and beat my opponent’s counter? These are some of the questions that you should ask when a move fails and the only way you will learn how to answer these is to try your techniques!

Often we learn far more from our mistakes and so called failures. So start moving and fail more often, learn from these mistakes and take your Jiu Jitsu to the next level! Developing “confidence” is just like developing any other muscle, you have to work at it!

Felipe Grez
jiujitsukingdom.com