Keep Track of Your BJJ Progress
I’m sure you’ve seen this scenario, whether you’re a parent or not. A family friend or relative comes to the house that has not been over in a few months or longer. When they see the child or children they exclaim, “Wow, you get bigger every time I see you!” But the parents who see the child every day don’t see any change. They know that children grow, but they see them every day and can’t perceive the change. This is the same case for your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu game. You imagine that you are improving but it’s hard to see sometimes. Of course there are times when you are on an improvement spike and you may see improvement every time you are at your Jiu Jitsu school. But a lot of times you’re improvement is barely perceptible by you.
We crave feedback. We need to know that the actions we are taking are giving us positive results. If you don’t see that you are improving, you may start getting hard on yourself and you don’t want to train. The right mindset for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a positive mindset. You will accomplish more, and get better results when you are positive and confident in your ability. That’s why you need to keep track of your progress, and there are a number of ways to do this.
Keep an inventory of your BJJ techniques. You should be writing down all of the technique you learn in a notebook or on your computer. Keeping track of your repertoire of techniques will show your improvement to yourself. Date all of your technique notes so you know how many you’ve added in a certain time period.
Write down little successes. Did you finally tighten up that little detail of the arm bar from mount? Did you remember to keep your elbows in when doing a particular pass, thus preventing that triangle you always get caught in? These little successes can be a big confidence booster in BJJ, and by writing down these things that you’ve done well you are much more likely to repeat them in the future.
Set short term goals for yourself. A few examples would be to learn a certain number of sweeps, to get 10 arm bars in a week, etc. There are a few things to keep in mind when setting these goals. The goal needs to be measurable. Don’t say “I want to get better this week”. Instead say “I want to improve my guard game this week by learning a new sweep.” Make sure that there is a time frame for your goal. When do you want to accomplish it by? The point of these short term goals is to improve your confidence in your Jiu Jitsu game. So make sure the goal is challenging, but do-able.
Compare yourself to yourself. One thing you don’t want to do is measure your Jiu Jitsu improvement solely on comparisons with other people. Everyone will progress at different levels. And every one has good and bad days. If you compare yourself to ‘Bob’ you may feel bad about yourself because he is improving faster than you. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t improving. Another danger in comparing ourselves to others comes with sparring sessions. It’s easy to get excited when you beat someone that you think is better than you. And it’s just as easy to get upset when someone beats you that you think you’re better than. But this is a trap. In Jiu Jitsu we all have good days, and we all have bad days. Maybe you beat someone because they were having a bad day, and maybe you were beaten because you were having a bad day. You must measure your progress over the long term, and you must measure your improvement based on your overall past performance.
Hear are a few good reasons to keep track of your progress
Whenever you improve in an area, writing it down will allow you to think about what made that improvement possible. You can begin to analyze what you did to get a certain sweep that you have been missing before, or to pull off an escape that’s never worked in the past. With enough detailed information, you can figure out the cause and effect relationship and can find what things help you improve your BJJ the most. If the cause was a little detail that you’ve left out in the past, then you are much more likely to remember it in the future. If the cause was something more general, like a particular posture that allowed you to pull off a guard pass that’s been eluding you, then you can start applying this posture to other guard passes to improve them as well. Try to replicate positive effects in other areas of your game. See if ‘Cause A’ can be transferred to another part of your game to produce a similar positive effect.
Check out this advanced BJJ sparring exercise.
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