Guilherme Mendes was at one point the best BJJ competitor on the planet in his weight class and he’s since become one of the top coaches in the sport. Along with his brother Rafael Mendes, he’s built an incredible team of elite grapplers at Art of Jiu-Jitsu over a decade or so of incredibly hard work. He recently gave a seminar in Japan and at one point during the extended training session, he gave his thoughts on how to become a better BJJ competitor. Obviously he’s one of the few people on the planet who are able to give this advice from the perspective of both an elite competitor and an elite coach.
He listed off 3 ways to become a better BJJ competitor and the first aspect of the advice that Guilherme Mendes gave is key to making huge improvements no matter what level you find yourself at:
“I think the first one is constantly self-evaluating yourself, like seeing what level you are. Every day, every week you need to be analyzing your level… Being real to yourself and recognizing what level you have.”
This is advice that most people are aware of at a certain level, as a coach only has so many hours in a day. Everyone training in a sport has to be able to be self-critical and find ways to improve themselves on a regular basis. The second aspect of his advice is one that many people might disagree with or even just be reluctant to act on, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s vital to everyone’s growth:
“I think the second one is finding the right group of people that will push you, and I feel that’s where people make the most mistakes. When you go to the academy and you try to train with everybody, the majority of the people are not a good training for you, if your goal is competition. Once you conquer that level, you’re the best of that group, the goal is to jump to the next one.”
Some people aren’t willing to move cities or countries in search of better training environments, but it’s actually a common trend among top competitors. There are incredibly few BJJ black belt world champions who have stayed with the same gym from the very beginning until the end. Even those that might have stayed with the same affiliation have usually moved from smaller gyms to the main headquarters location in order to train with the best grapplers in the wider group. The third piece of advice Guilherme Mendes has to become a better BJJ competitor is something that might happen naturally for all grapplers at some point, but it has to be more intentional than that:
“And the third one, and I think it’s also really important, is to master a system. Like you need to be good at doing something and be able to apply it against the majority of the people your size and your skill level. If you don’t master anything, if you’re not good at anything, you know a little bit of everything but you’re not good, it’s hard for you to be competitive.”
This is something that we see reflected in the highest levels of competition all of the time. Almost every competitor has that one area they specialize in where they know they can win a match against practically anyone on the planet if they can get it there. As time goes on, top competitors will often diversify and add other areas to their game that they excel at but everyone starts with one core area that they can claim to be among the best on the planet at.
The full video of Guilherme Mendes explains 3 ways to become a better BJJ competitor was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Josh Beam:
