The vast majority of people who train BJJ have bought one or more instructionals at some point during their journey, but it can be tough to figure out how to get the most out of them. It’s a completely different experience than learning BJJ from a coach who is right in front of you and having a partner to practice with minutes later, so some people struggle to really digest the content. It’s well worth figuring out though, because instructionals are one of the best ways to learn off the mat and most of the world’s top competitors have put out mountains of information that will allow anyone to understand how they do what they do.
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How To Get The Most Out Of BJJ Instructionals
The value of instructionals really can’t be undersold in BJJ, and getting the most of them can have massive measurable effects on your ability. Having a good coach is always going to be the easiest way to correct mistakes or develop new skills at the beginning of your BJJ journey but at a certain point, everyone needs more than that. Not only is there going to be specific areas of the sport that your coach may not excel at, but instructionals allow people to have access to the very best in the world. Whether you’re searching for a specific niche or just a better overall understanding, instructionals can make a huge difference.
Don’t Pay Over The Odds
Although the price that you pay may not be directly related to absorbing the information in a BJJ instructional, making sure you don’t spend too much money on a single item is a great way of getting the most out of instructionals in general. BJJ Fanatics is one of a few instructional sites that do regular sales and reduce the price of their continent by more than half the original cost. With that in mind, it’s pretty easy to get at least two different releases for the price of one. If you can hold out for some of the bigger sales at key points of the year, it’s not uncommon to get three or four different instructionals for the same price.
This is the easiest way to make sure that you have access to a larger amount of content without having to break the bank. Having more information at your fingertips is never going to be a bad thing, and another good idea is to buy the best instructional bundles rather than single releases. That means that you’re going to save more money, and get a more holistic view of the game. It’s also best to stick to the best instructors around so that you can make sure that what you’re getting is the highest quality possible, although it’s worth remembering that the best information on different areas may well come from different people.
Watch And Rewatch A Section At A Time
Now that you’ve bought one or more instructionals at a good price, it can be tempting to sit down and watch the whole thing in an attempt to get most of the information out of it. That isn’t what’s going to happen though. For starters, some instructionals are 8 or more hours long and simply impossible to watch in one sitting. Even for those that are, it’s impossible to really retain the information if you’re attempting to absorb that much of it all at once. The vast majority of instructionals are broken down into sections for a reason and any good instructor will have thought hard about how best to separate their content.
Take advantage of that and sit through just one section at a time, more than once before you try to put it into practice. Make notes as you go through it and you should find yourself armed with more than enough to test out once you do hit the mats. It’s a pretty long process but it’s the easiest way to make sure that you actually remember the details of what you’re trying to learn. When you come back from training, it’s time to watch it again and pick up any additional details that you might have missed the first time around. This is how you answer questions and troubleshoot some of the problems you might have encountered.
Find The Right Training Partner
You need someone to practice with if you’re ever going to get the most out of any BJJ instructionals and it’s not enough to just try out techniques in live rolling. You’re going to need to drill on someone and a grappling dummy is never going to be good enough. You need a partner who’s willing to let you drill the techniques at an open mat, most likely in exchange for you returning the favor and letting them work on something they’re trying to develop. They need to be someone within your rough weight-range and preferably somewhere within reaching distance your technical ability too.
The reason for this is because you’re going to have to do a lot of positional sparring too. Trying out techniques in sparring is good, but it can be tough to control exactly where the roll goes and if you’re working on butterfly guard as an example then you may not even get there. That’s why positional sparring is so beneficial. In just 5 to 10 minutes of positional sparring you can get more practice in a specific area that you’re developing from one of your instructionals than you would in half an hour to an hour of rolling in a regular BJJ class.
Go At Your Own Pace
You only move on to the next section of your instructional once you’re actually ready to do so. It can be tough at times, because you’re undoubtedly going to get frustrated or maybe even bored when attempting the same things over and over. It doesn’t hurt to take breaks to avoid burnout in general, but you should still return to the same content rather than skipping ahead or abandoning it entirely. It may take weeks or even months for you to add a new element to your game, so make sure you only move on when you can reliably hit it on people at your level.
Likewise, don’t be afraid to move on if you pick something up quickly. You might have a natural affinity for a specific technique or maybe you were already doing it partially correct and only needed to patch up some holes. If this happens and you find yourself using something that you’ve picked up from your instructionals against peers in a regular BJJ class all the time, move on to the next section to make the most out of the whole product. It doesn’t matter how long or short the process is, all that matters is that you do it well.
Go Back When You Hit A Brick Wall
It can happen to the best grapplers in the world, but sometimes people simply pick up bad habits or start making mistakes. Just because you do something right even a thousand times doesn’t mean you can’t start doing it wrong, and having success when doing it wrong is how these habits develop. This tends to happen when someone works hard on developing a new area of their BJJ game and reaches the end of one of their instructionals, so they put it to one side and continue along their journey.
Then they might get promoted or move to a new gym and suddenly find that what they thought they were good at isn’t working as well any more. This is a surefire sign that you were getting away with bad habits or against less experienced practitioners, or those that aren’t as exposed to a specific area. Don’t be afraid to go back to the instructional that you learned that technique from because, as long as you picked one from a good instructor, there will almost certainly be the solutions to your problems there. It could be something you missed the first time or something you’d forgotten about, but going back to the source is a great way to fix problems later down the line.
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