Jozef Chen believes one of the biggest advantages he had as a young grappler had nothing to do with training methods, coaching, or physical attributes.

Instead, he credits part of his development to growing up before short-form content became a constant distraction.

Chen explained that long commutes to training played a significant role in his growth:

Two things I think benefited my Jiu-Jitsu game: Instagram and YouTube shorts didn’t exist at the time.
I used to watch instructionals on my phone.

I feel like if there were like Instagram Reels back then, I would be cooked.

Chen admitted that even today he finds it difficult to avoid getting pulled into short-form content:

I dislike this with like a passion. I get sucked into it sometimes and I’m like: “What just happened?”
I wish I could just delete this.

Looking back, he believes those long periods spent commuting gave him uninterrupted time to learn and think about the sport:

I kind of miss my long commute. I don’t really have that commute time anymore.

From an early stage of my career, I was watching instructionals and I would just basically troubleshoot them.

Because he couldn’t ask instructors direct questions, he had to analyze his own performance and identify mistakes on his own:

I couldn’t ask the people in the instructionals: “Yo, what am I doing wrong?”
I had to watch my rolls, I had to think about my rolls, and so it forced me to be able to perform that type of problem solving.

And I think that’s something that really helps me a lot in terms of being able to improve.

Chen explained that saving short clips from instructional videos allows him to quickly reference techniques while training:

I might do that in between drilling. If I’m drilling during open training and I’m trying to practice this thing that I saw and I just can’t remember how to do it, I’ll pull up the screen recording and practice it there.

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