Goal Setting & Deliberate Practice

Anytime that we want to get "better" at something we need a way to measure our progress, otherwise how will we know if we actually got better?

In Jiu-Jitsu this can seem difficult to monitor and track other than how you feel day-to-day. To a certain point, this is the way we measure our skill and talent along our Jiu-Jitsu journey.

However, we can improve upon this by setting goals and structuring our training a certain way.

Let's discuss goal setting first.

Imagine that you are a blue belt and you've just learned your first sweep from the DeLa Riva guard. You really like the sweep and have caught a few white belts with it over the past week. However, you just can't seem to use it on anyone your rank or above... what do you do?

First set your goal

Let's say your goal is to hit the DLR sweep on one blue belt and one purple belt in the next 30 days.

Next, set the process

In order the achieve your original goal of hitting the DLR sweep on a blue or purple you probably want to add 2 or 3 moves as follow-ups in case they counter the original sweep.

Now, you would set up how many days per week you'll drill your moves in a sequence. For example, "I will drill the DLR sequence for 25 minutes a day, 4 days a week on a non-resisting opponent.

Now comes the time for what we call "Deliberate Practice"

Most people come to class and when it comes time to roll, they just go through the motions and see what the outcome is. Of course, they try hard and try "win the roll" but there isn't much thought outside of that.

When you have a goal in mind, you will want to practice "deliberately". Using the example of the DLR sweep, you would ask all of your training partners if they can start on top inside of your DeLa Riva guard.

From there you would attempt to set up your new sweep on every person you roll with during that training session. 
Does that mean you will achieve your goal? No, but it will give you the chance to get real-time feedback and go back after the live roll to ask questions, experiment, and play around with other moves that may help you in the next roll.

If you start training this way you will see progress much faster.

Of course, if you are a white belt then you may not have enough of an understanding of the overall positions in Jiu-Jitsu so this is geared more towards blue belts and above.