Tag Archives: competition footage

How to Start Setting Goals in BJJ: Keep It Short and Do It Every Day

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I believe there is no one magical goal-setting process that works for everyone. It all depends on your personality and the magnitude of the goal. So while I often write about goal setting strategies, this post is more about the early steps of a goal-setting journey.

Here is something that works for me when I first consider a major goal, and hopefully can work for you as well. When I get a spark of motivation to develop a specific skill, I set a tiny goal of working on that skill for 10 minutes every day. The most important thing is to never ever EVER skip out on those 10 minutes. No matter what happens, no matter where your life takes you, you must spend 10 minutes doing it. Of course, if the skill requires you to be somewhere (like behind a computer or on the mat), and you can’t possible get there on a particular day, you have to come up with alternative tasks to do for 10 minutes. To keep track of all this, I make a table on Google Docs, and put a check next to every day that I accomplish this goal, and every day better get a damn check next to it! Here’s a cool video on habits and goals:

For example, I decided that I will watch judo or jiu jitsu competition footage for 10 minutes every day. Now, for many people, including myself, there are plenty of days where I easily watch way over that and am happy to do it. But trust me when I tell you that there are days when just 10 minutes is torture. On those days, I’m tired, discouraged, busy with work, or a mix of all these and more.

What’s the point of this process? I’m building a habit. You have to get your body and mind used to doing this task every day. You have to get past the first several weeks that essentially a roller coaster ride of REALLY wanting to do it and wanting to quit forever.

Once the foundation of the habit is built, then the sky is the limit. If you found that it’s something that seems to be working for you, then you can slowly increase the time you spend on the task every day. But be careful! You’re setting a lower limit on the time. You can do more, but you can never do less. So if you increase the limit from 10 minutes to 30 minutes or even an hour, you better be ready for some rough days.

I apply this little step to a lot of aspects of my life including work and jiu jitsu. It’s definitely challenging and stressful at times, but is ultimately rewarding.

A Private for the Price of One Coffee

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Josh Vogel is a jiu jitsu guru, so when he announced that he will review your tournament video for $5, I jumped on the opportunity. He analyzed two videos of mine (check out one of them) and it gave me a lot to think about and work on.

I especially like that his analysis wasn’t “You should quit jiu jitsu because you clearly suck. Please stop.” Instead, he took every situation in the video seriously, highlighting problems areas, provided a bunch of technique options, and discussing general strategy.

I highly recommend that you send Josh one of your competition videos, while he’s giving it away for so cheap.

The benefit I got from analyzing just two videos made me realize that I want to make this a regular part of my competition process. It’s important to analyze your competition footage, but there’s only so much you can do on your own. You need another set of eyes, preferably those of an expert.

Josh noticed a lot of things that I didn’t even consider to be options. Both matches I sent him were losses, because of course I don’t want to ever lose the same way twice. For that, you have to find where you went wrong, and drill those positions until the mistake is much less likely to happen again.

The Day-to-Day of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Judo

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bjj-judo-laundryWhen I first started grappling, I thought I’d just show up once or twice a week, get my ass kicked, and then go home happy. But the more I trained, the more I learned that there are things that I have to do off the mat in order to improve my game or even just to make the whole experience pleasant and feasible as part of a busy life:

  • Laundry. A gi should never be worn for two practices without being washed in-between (unless you did zero work, but even then). Also it should be thoroughly air-dried.
  • Diet.
    • I used to think that diet was about losing weight. It is. But it’s also about eating stuff that can keep you energized throughout the day and through training. Also, my digestive system is pretty screwed up, so a big part of a diet for me is figuring out what to eat in order to avoid getting sick or having a stomachache in training. If I fail in this aspect, it definitely makes training less fun.
    • Drink water (to counter-balance the pots of coffee I consume)
  • Shower. Right away after every practice.
  • Medical Tape. Most of the taping I do is to cover cuts and mat burn so as to help avoid infection. This is really a major pain in the ass.
  • Transit
    • Learn the public transit system (the subway and rails are hard enough, but the bus system is a chaotic mess of routes and schedules)
    • Learn how to stay productive while riding or waiting for the bus/train
  • Learn
    • Watch competition footage
    • Watch instructional videos
    • Read instructional books
    • Keep notes

The above, to me, is the “jiu-jitsu lifestyle”: doing laundry, taking showers, and riding the bus. It’s not as glorious as sex, drugs, and surfing, but I still love it.