Training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can be a real rollercoaster of emotions. A couple of days you feel great about your progress and then you feel bad about it later. This, it must be emphasized, is completely normal; you’ll go through these ups and downs during your BJJ journey quite often, and the most important thing you could do while at it is to keep going. Because that’s what will differentiate you from all those who quit when the going got hard.
However, one surprising thing that you could additionally do to make sure you’ll keep going and keep progressing is to lower your expectations. Here is why.

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND KEEP TRAINING

First of all, by lowering your expectations you’ll actually make sure that there are expectations in the first place. For, without any expectations whatsoever, it is going to be difficult to measure progress and it’s going to be easier to get discouraged.
That is why you’ve got set goals; which will serve as checkpoints for your rate of improvement in BJJ.

Now, why should these expectations be low? Won’t that hinder your progress? Well, surprisingly enough – it won’t! For, when you set your expect a bit of progress from yourself every single day, you’re going to make sure that you’re making at least that amount of progress each training session! Which doesn’t mean that you have to (nor that you will) stop short on that; but that you’ll likely improve even more on other days.
One of the best ways to approach this is through the “1% better” principle. Just aim to become 1% better each day… That’s not a lot, but over 100 training sessions that means you’ll become 100% better!

Professor Ryan Young, from Kama Jiu-Jitsu, explains more on the video below: