You Might be in Trouble

We’ve been looking at how you can tell if you’re getting better at jiu jitsu.

Can you tell if you’re getting better by comparing yourself to your training partners?

Maybe.

Is it a plateau, or is it just harder to tell you’re getting better once you’ve been training for a while?

Could be both.

Does competition tell you how good you are?

Sometimes.

Does a bad day of training mean you haven’t been making progress?

Probably not.

So I realize it might feel like I’ve spent the last few weeks telling you that all the ways you might want to measure progress are not the best ways to measure progress.

Which is fair.

But here’s what I can say.

The best way to know if you’ve gotten better at jiu jitsu is to compare yourself to an older version of yourself.

Imagine a match between you now and the version of you from a week ago, a month ago, or a year ago.

How would that go?

Would you be crisper?

Would you be quicker?

Would you make better decisions?

Would you find more submission attempts, more sweep attempts, or better passing positions?

Would you spend less energy?

Would you move more efficiently?

Would you defend things now that used to work on you all the time?

That might be the truest way to know if your jiu jitsu is improving.

Not whether you can beat someone else.

Not whether every round feels good.

Not whether one tournament went the way you wanted it to.

But whether the version of you now can solve problems that the old version of you couldn’t.

And as useful as that thought experiment can be, there’s an even better way to see it.

Record some of your sparring rounds every now and then.

Watch them back.

Not to beat yourself up over every mistake. You’ll have plenty of opportunities for that without video evidence.

Watch them so you can see what is actually happening.

Then watch them again a month or two later.

You might notice that you are moving better.

You might notice that you are reacting sooner.

You might notice that a position that looked confusing before now looks a little more obvious.

That’s progress.

It may not always be loud.

It may not always show up as a win.

But if the version of you from a year ago would be in trouble against the version of you now, that’s probably a pretty good sign.

See you on the mats.