This is a great, long overdue conversation. I have very little free tjme (father of 4, run my own company, look after sick parents). I think there should ALWAYS be a goal when training or rolling. Maybe you don’t have the time or inclination to work on a technique or setup, but you can always find something to focus on - stay calm in a bad position, don’t let your back get taken, roll one more round when you are “too tired”, pick a partner you know will rough you up…something.

I can totally relate to this topic. I did 5 years of movement training with a coach that had a structured way of teaching the content. She often used the analogy of learning to speak a language. As students we learned basic locomotion movements like learning the alphabet, then advanced to piecing them together to create words and progressing to advanced where we could eventually piece together sentences instinctively like speaking a language. We were disciplined to record our training as a learning tool and document our training sessions. I’m contrast, my experience with bjj has been very basic. There is a focus on a technique every week which is arbitrary. I believe this is largely due to rotating coaches and trying to cater to so many students of varying levels. I’ve personally taken more ownership of my learning by incorporating choosing techniques online I want to practice and working with partners to drill before and after class. I take responsibility for assessing areas I need to develop and use the gym for the benefit of the training partners and mat time to practice. I will definitely start to record my rolls moving forward!

At purple belt I started training twice a day.. I know most people can’t do this but if you can.. you’ll get good fast. Also, drilling is boring but that’s what makes champions. Get good quality reps in and if your school is teaching something different every single night it’s probably not a place where you’re going to retain much. We spend at least a month on topics.

I've never head the phrase reverse classroom learning but this is what I apply. I'm 43 and started BJJ about 4 months ago. The academy I attend has their entire private course schedule online and they provide instructional videos for each lesson. I watch the lesson before I go to get an idea, attend the lesson, then watch the video back the next day to make sure I understand it. Since I had back surgery a couple years ago, I don't do regular classes so I'm still a little gun shy about running into some young beast trying to show off. I have a LONG way to go but I've found this approach has been extremely helpful in learning, as the guys alluded, what feels like a new language. Appreciate the videos, keep up the good work.

The whole “misremembering how the rolls went” is 💯💯💯💯💯💯

Spend a month working on one aspect of jj. Side control escapes, back attacks leg locks I need a theme every month. And less new moves. Drilling the same moves and reviewing

Absolutely love this conversation and topic. I've been a longtime fan of you guys and am glad you are revisiting theories of how to accelerate your progress. I had a similar conversation with a few of my friends, two years back, that led me to test our hypothesis around accelerated progress through note taking, video recordings, and enhanced learning (when away from the mats). Note taking seemed to be an archaic, yet effective tool because it allowed me to not only learn the 'language of jiu jitsu' faster, but bring clarity to concepts and techniques I had been taught. It also gave me an opportunity to reflect on what I should be intentionally focusing on while training (love your phrase "reverse classroom learning") Video was also great for rolling and visual feedback, but the hassle and distraction wasn't ideal for our academy. After taking notes for 6+ months and recommending it to other students at my gym, I found there were several 'holes': 1. Uniformity and organization - my notes naturally changed over time and most of the notes that I gathered from others (typed or written) were incomprehensible 2. Structure and system - my structure changed based on what I was doing, and the system (or lack thereof) wasn't adding much value . 3. Consistency - this stemmed from both #1 & 2, amongst a few other things including my own personal habits and schedule. Due to these findings I started to designed a journal specifically for this - a journal for jiu jitsu with a layout and format that provided organization and a systematic structure to help me stay consistent. After 2 years of beta testing and designing with other jiu jitsu practitioners, I released 'The Practitioner's Journal | Jiu Jitsu' - which is a notebook specifically design for this. It's not available internationally yet (USA only) right now, but would love to send you guys some copies if you are interested. My intention is not to plug a product, but want to provide value and awareness for anyone who has those same issues and difficulties with note taking as I do. I never planned on creating a product to sell, but more a tool to enhance my own game that also had an aesthetically pleasing look, that I could take to work, coffeeshops, and that my girlfriend could approve of. Thanks guys. Hope this helps someone > thepractitionersjournal . com

2 year white belt here. Fresh off my first comp at the weekend. I’ve realised that class structures are really good at giving me a low-medium level of proficiency at many techniques. I think if I had trained two takedowns, two guard passes and two subs for say six months, my comp game would be wayyy better. So if I wanted to get more focussed on developing an A game, how could I do this when class structure is often 45 mins on a new technique ?

You touched on a lot of the things we wanted to do differently here. Structure and plan things out, we often spend a month on a certain positions, I want to get to the point where the whole year is planned out (not the details, just the broad topics). Slowly upping resistance and troubleshooting as we go, rather than 0 when drilling and 100 when positional sparring. Its an interesting process to get the balance right, time you have spent on something is time you HAVENT spent on something else, deciding when enough is enough and we need to get to other things is also important.

We have been doing a flipped classroom for years! I love it. For us we do a live roll and then 5 minutes of drilling with that partner after. Then 5 minute live roll. Then drilling after problem areas. and repeat.

I’m 2months into my BJJ journey and I love my studio because of their teaching style. They pick a monthly area of focus and it has expedite my BJJ journey. When I was doing trials I noticed a lot of academy’s basically randomize their lessons and there’s no consistent lesson. With this method it feels great because whatever I learn the day/week before will be the starting point of the next lesson. Far better method for effectively teaching.

15k subscribers and we get a Joey vs JT rolling footage upload

Some of the best advice I heard on journaling for BJJ after training is start with what you did well. If you always start with mistakes (of which I make many), it can be a bit demoralizing. Then for the lessons learned, pick 1 thing (maybe 2) of “What did you do?”, “What should you have done?”, “What do I need to learn/look up to do it better?” Mine’s digital, (tagged as the ‘Do-Over Moment’) and I can add tags for specific positions or escapes so I can see where the trends are over time. Template: #Win #Challenge #Lessons Learned [[Do-Over Moment]] -What I Did- -How I'll Do It in the Future- -Patterns/Things to Look Up

I love this show…!

This is exactly why so many people quit as more often than not the so called ‘Professors’ do not have aptitude in coaching/ teaching and classes lack structure week to week. In that sense BJJ is still very much an amateur sport despite its growth over the last ten years or so.

I think we can accelerate the pace of getting to black belt for sure. The biggest thing is having a structured beginners program as well as arranging topics conceptually rather than individual techniques.

Jordan Teaches Jiu Jitsu just released a “Jiu Jitsu Theory course”! It’s fantastic and everyone should go buy it! I’m a white belt and it’s helped me a ton!

I just started BJJ not long ago and I agree, it's so strange for me to not get that theoretical side. It's trial and error for me to realise lessons that should have been taught explicitly and so much grappling time is wasted because I haven't been given any game plan that I can test. Rolling is a great learning experience, but it would be more effective as a means to test out theories and lessons. Not the lesson itself. Ever class introduces one or two techniques and then we practice but there's no curriculum, there's no structure to the techniques and this leaves me with huge gaps of knowledge.

I'm only about 5 minutes in, but I can already tell this is going to be a really valuable video, partly because of my own inclination and partly inspired by some of the ways I've heard John Danaher talking about BJJ, I'm trying to be really systematic and learn it like a subject in school, with conscious attention to my learning strategies themselves.

excellent

Killer Jersey John accent, Joey... need to get that guy on the show.

GB is pretty good for having a structured curriculum for white belts. The guys at my gym say they roll like robots though.

I was told the hat would be off

I never understood why instructors didn’t just create essentially a syllabus that’s available to the students. Here’s what we’re working on this month, these are some references, maybe there’s a recording of the class for those who missed the the class. 🤷 , I don’t own a school so maybe it’s just more work than it’s worth.

You don't need to know the details of a move or practise it much to still be able to hit it, for example I'm 100% sure I could oil check Joey in a roll

What’s that app called

14:57 "Porra!" hahahahahahah

Shimmy shimmy ya

The noob's luck that succeed on his first sub attempt. Short live. I was one of em. I caught a BJJ blue belt with a flying armbar after 5 second of round one of competition class, on my year one, week one. But that success was very short live. Students caught up with them and we soon have to pay our dus on the mat just like everyone. Why people get their black after 10-11 years ? Let me tell you something, let me be clear on that. In this eastern part of Canada, instructors hold back students a lot. So basically, lot of us are wearing a colored belt that doesnt reflect the skill set we possess. Need to speed up the path to black belt ? Ok let me state you flat out my mark limit OP. Since the black belt is the longest belt, no need to speed up things. I'd rather be under belted, than an over-belted black belt. And you dont want to be that BJJ black belt, you want to be that BJJ BLACK BELT. The flow chart map. I once heard Roy Harris talked about we need to limit this potential map to about 50 techniques or so. He uses 38 techniques and a multiple BJJ black belt with success. The map tends to become a sea, and its easy to lose one's self in the sea of techniques, soon overwhelmed, and drowned. Self video content. For one thing, I once realize that high level and instructors submitted me, but they mostly needed 60 seconds per submission to get me. This got to my attention, like I am highly defensive and good at it. I'll defend 8 moves, counter one, and maybe sub attempt once, every round. I just love to defend ala Priit Mikhlesson/older Dean Lister. Other than that, I hate to watch me on video, I keep yelling at me for not creating enough movements. Feed backs. If I were to rely on jiujiteiros feed backs in my last decade, I would still be a sorry ass white belt that should leave BJJ. However, I do a lot of studies outside the grappling academy. Ton of my time is dedicated to study BJJ material, youtube and grappling dummy drill and testing. Most people over here arent prone to give feed backs. Instructors are guides. Are they ? Depends on the school I guess. Mine wants to to attack more. That academy doesn't believe in defending. Lot is spent on submission attempts, reason why I'm having success with Priit Mikhlesson approach. This school spends the bulk of their time on top mount, triangle from there, as I began defending this, their BJJ is hardly adjusting and lot of frustrations is exposed. The Q and A is what our instructors often, but it ends up being only me asking questions, cause students want out. So I confess my mistakes and limitations, than they gladly answer and feed their best instructions.

JT looks like Andrew Tate