Have you ever been trapped in the prison of a Jiu-Jitsu plateau?
Maybe you feel like you’re doing all the right things.
You’re training as much as you can, doing what your coach tells you, and maybe you’re even competing a bit. You want to be better, but you’re just not getting there.
What gives?
What do you do?
Buy some new expensive rashguards?
Buy some instructionals? (Maybe mine?)
Go to a seminar?
Purchase some private lessons?
Read The Grappler’s Diary religiously?
While these 5 things will all help you get better at Jiu-Jitsu (even buying the rashguards), these aren’t the 5 things that I’d do when I experience a plateau in my training. I’ll get to those in a minute.
If you’re anything like I was at purple and blue belt, it might be because you don’t know how to actually train Jiu-Jitsu in a way that makes you better at Jiu-Jitsu.
You might be training hard and you might be training consistently, but are you training smart?
Most people aren’t.
Most Jiu-Jitsu coaches just teach moves.
When I was training as a white belt in the Western United States, I had one of those coaches.
He wasn’t a bad guy or anything, and in fact, he wasn’t even a lazy coach. If anything, my coach when I was training out there was doing too much. He was a “professor” and everyone at the gym had a deep respect for him, but I didn’t really learn much from him.
I rolled with him once and he beat the heck out of me, but again, I didn’t learn anything. I just learned that I was a white belt and he was a black belt who was better.
When he taught class, I’d learn a few moves, we’d line up and bow to each other, and then he’d beat the shit out of me again.
It wasn’t a toxic gym by any means, just a bad one. It’s really hard to get better when all you're given from your coach is some moves and a few beatings.
When I started training with Jeff Serafin regularly (who would eventually give me my black belt in 2022), I learned the most important lessons about training and getting better at Jiu-Jitsu.
I learned how to get past plateaus.
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