Supercharge Your BJJ Growth


A still from a John Danaher instructional

Listening to the stories of people who started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the 90s, I have always noticed a similar pattern. They seek out and find some worn-down gym with a bunch of people rolling around, then there is the first experience of sparring and being demolished by someone smaller, weaker, and less athletic. Then starts the fascination with BJJ, becoming an obsession, followed by (important!) minimal opportunities to learn anything about BJJ outside the gym.

These days, the pattern is slightly different. BJJ is much more mainstream, thanks to its importance in the fastest-growing sport of MMA, as well as the expanding interest in, as well as the range, and viewership of BJJ competitions. So most people who start BJJ have some idea about what they are getting into. And while the first experience of sparring is usually the same as thirty years ago, what has changed tremendously is the amount of BJJ resources out there.

In this article, I want to talk about BJJ instructionals. How to choose them, what to study, and most importantly, how to study.

First of all, seek material appropriate to your level. If you are only two months in, watching Gordon Ryan's instructionals is a waste of time. You simply do not have enough reference points to learn advanced systems and techniques. As a complete beginner, you are much better off focusing on learning how to be safe, then fundamental techniques of escapes, then guard, then the top game, and most high-percentage attacks. I won’t go into detail here, you can find my advice for the white belts seeking to become blue belts in my article Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — The Path to Blue Belt.

As you gradually gain more experience in jiu-jitsu, self-study should become a key part of your learning. You are much more in a position to start experimenting, branching out, and building game plans. You can find my thoughts on the journey from blue belt onwards in my article Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — You are a Blue Belt, now what?

At white belt, your best investment is studying fundamentals, typically through short-format videos, for which YouTube is best. You need some specific tutorials and you won’t be able to retain much of the information you consume, so keep it short. But at blue belt onward, I recommend you start taking your time. Long-format instructionals can revolutionize your training and jiu-jitsu progression. You can still look up short videos if you are trying to fix a specific problem, but the long-term format should take most of your instructional study.

There are a number of specialized resources with such materials. The most significant among these is probably the BJJ Fanatics — offering hundreds upon hundreds of instructionals on every possible topic related to the sport. Other resources include the MGinAction by Marcel Garcia, GrapplersGuide by Jason Scully, Jiujitsux by Keenan Cornelius, and others. The pricing differs, but you are learning from some of the best athletes and coaches in the world.

At the beginning of my experiments with BJJ instructionals, I have been, sadly, one of the thousands of members of the “I watched an hour-long instructional and barely remember anything” group of jiu-jitsu practitioners. It is hard to retain and apply what you see in an instructional. There is a reason why a coach and a sparring partner are essential when learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It is a physical activity after all, and an activity practiced with another person.

That said, there are specific things you can do, to maximize the value of the time you spend watching instructionals. So here are a few things you should do first:

• Pick the right type of instruction. This is so important, I will repeat myself. What are you looking for? Learning material for beginners or advanced practitioners? Covering a general theme or a specific position or technique? Gi or no-gi? Make a choice.
   
• Choose the area you want to study. You can choose to expand your game gradually by researching a position that connects well with your game. For example, if your favorite guard is butterfly guard, you might want to expand into half guard, single leg-X, and X-guard. If you prefer the supine guard, add Reverse de la Riva. You might want to connect Reverse de la Riva with de la Riva. If you prefer closed guard, you might want to review the K-guard. And so on. Finally, sometimes unrelated topics. Fun. Serendipity — embrace randomness.

• Pick the right instructor. Not all instructors are equally good. Some excellent competitors can be pretty bad teachers. So choose well. You cannot go wrong with Jon Danaher for example. From white belt to black, everyone can learn a lot from Danaher’s instructionals. Arguably the best coach in the business, he offers a number of well-structured courses (available on BJJ Fanatics). For gi, check out his Go Further Faster series. For no-gi, Enter the System series and the New Wave Jiu-Jitsu. For advanced practitioners, anything by Gordon Ryan is quality material. You can go with Marcelo Garcia, Lachlan Giles, Craig Jones, Gary Tonon and many others. Pick your poison.
 
• Do not overdo it. Too much good material is not a good idea. The instructionals that just sit in the memory of your computer and you never watch are not improving your game. So don’t try to find, buy and download EVERYTHING. Be selective. Remember Bruce Lee’s famous “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”.

Now that you have selected the instructional you are going to work on, here are the things you can do to make your study session more effective:

• Watch a section per sitting, not an entire instructional. BJJ can be intense. A lot of details, movements, concepts, and techniques. Know when to stop. How much can you actually absorb

• Take notes. Whatever format works for you, linear, mind map, whatever. I recommend taking notes digitally, on a platform that you can sync across your devices (Evernote, Notion, or another similar tool), so you can quickly look your notes up during your training session, particularly before rolling.

• Use stills. Pause the video at key points and copy that picture into your notes. BJJ is a sport of physical movement and sometimes it is hard to capture what you are supposed to do with words and sentences. A still from an instructional, or series of stills can easily remind you what is the move that you are trying to execute. Using still was a huge upgrade in my BJJ note-taking. I cannot recommend this enough.

• Re-watch it! Good instructionals can and should be watched multiple times. You will discover that as you improve in jiu-jitsu, you start noticing things you did not pick up on the first time you watched the instructional. So every once in a while, go back to excellent instructionals that you rate highly.

• Watch the instructional with a sparring partner at hand. Watch, stop, drill, go back to the video, and keep watching. This is arguably the best way to do it. If you have a study partner, brilliant.

Do not think that just watching instructionals will make you better. It is COMPLEMENTARY to mat time. Make sure you actually practice the moves you learn from the instructionals. Theoretical knowledge that is not applied is useless. So practice, practice, practice. At the end of the day, you need to be on the mats.

Try the moves on someone worse than you, then someone at your level, then someone better. This is Frank Shamrock’s training method. Make sure to ask for feedback. Ask your coach if there is something that does not seem to be working. Keep trying. Don’t abandon the move if you just tried it once and it did not work. Adjust, drill, and try again.

It is useful to complement your instructional study by watching competition footage. Especially the competitors whose style you want to emulate. Watching high-level competitors apply the techniques you are trying to learn in a competitive setting can be extremely useful.

There you have it. Good luck and let me know if there are any interesting methods you use to maximize the impact of studying jiu-jitsu instructionals.