You can do your physical conditioning, you can watch all of the competition video and analyze it, spend hours watching instructionals by top level instructors…
But…unless you are consistently getting your @ss into class and on the mat, your progress in jiu-jitsu be stunted.
When students express to me their frustrations at not improving fast enough, it is not usually the students who rarely miss the classes.
More often is the “here one week gone the next” who seem to be missing as often as not from the scheduled classes.
The students never really manage to generate any momentum in their training.
They are perpetually “getting back into it” and trying to get their mat fitness up to where “it used to be” and trying to remember their techniques.
A technique learned and then not repeated within a critical period of time afterwards is lost to memory.
A side control escape is demonstrated at Monday’s class and drilled throughout the week. By week’s end the regular students are almost bored with it. They can close their eyes and repeat the escape automatically.
The student who saw the escape once but doesn’t come again for another 7-10 days rolls. When they get caught under side control, I observe them freeze, frantically searching their hazy memory for the technique they saw last week.
Their arms are in the wrong position and they are stuck and quickly submitted.
Yes, life sometimes interferes with our training. But the mat is unforgiving. It rewards applied effort and discipline.
I love the saying “excuses don;t produce results, hard work does!”.
Either you are on the mat or you are not.
The other side of this is the average athlete who comes to class regularly.
Not possessing superior flexibility, strength or endurance, they just keep showing up consistently.
Within months they surpass the athletically more talented but inconsistent training partners.
The natural athlete who was once dominating them now has their hands full with the technically superior but consistent student.
You can see the shocked look on the face of the athlete when the guy they used to school is now gaining the upper hand in the roll!
The benefits of that mat time is impossible to measure on a class to class basis, but the consistency of applied effort accumulates into real progress.
It is common for students to question their potential or if they improving fast enough.
But rest assured, if you are showing up to class regularly and banking that all important mat time – YOU ARE getting better!
Jiu-jitsu Times – Advice: Once You’re Past The Beginner Stage
