What’s the healthiest food you can think of?
Quinoa?
Avocado?
Kobe beef?
Real olive oil?
It’s not a trick question.
For the purpose of this post, I don’t care so much about what exactly (and factually) the healthiest food on earth is.
I just want you to imagine a food item that you think/know is the healthiest ever.
This food item you came up with may be the healthiest thing ever…
… but you’re not supposed to eat an excessive amount of it.
If you eat it too much, even the healthiest food can become quite bad for your body.
It turns out…
You can say something similar about practicing your BJJ moves.
Wait, does this sound opposite to what I said last time?
In the previous post, I recommended finding one technique you like.
Once you figure that out, focus on improving it & forget everything else for the time being.
This is especially the case when you’re a beginner. And you can use the same approach even when you’re more advanced.
I use this process when I work on a new technique after all.
But, the thing is…
You shouldn’t just stick with one move & keep doing it again and again once you’ve become good at it.
The reason?
For your BJJ career in the long run, it’s much better to keep expanding your toolbox rather than doing the same few things over and over.
I made this mistake too. I spent way too much time working on triangle choke in my early years of BJJ.
See? It’s a bit like eating 100 avocados in a day.
I don’t think that deciding on triangle choke & sharpening it as my foundational move was a bad idea.
But, I could have spent more time on other moves & positions.
My progress would have been quicker that way.
Once you are reasonably good at executing one technique, start working on something else.
Yes, “reasonably good” sounds vague… so, let me explain a bit more.
You could measure your progress either in a relative way or in an absolute way.
In a “relative” way, you can say you’re making steady progress if your technique works on people around your skill level & size.
In an “absolute” way, you can measure your progress by seeing whom your technique works on.
Does it work on a white belt? Or a blue belt? Or a purple belt? And so on.
You can and should measure your progress in both ways, because it’s important to set and manage your BJJ learning experiences.
Is this something you hear people talking about often… or not really?
Perhaps I could talk more about this topic later.