Learn Brazilian Jujitsu
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is very challenging sport/martial art to take up. As soon as you've decided to take up BJJ, you've taken the first step to a very long journey. That is if you decide to stick to it.
In a nutshell, BJJ is an offshoot of Judo. Judo focuses on stand up techniques as well as ground technique. As Judo developed more over time, more emphasis was placed on stand up techniques. Depending on your sources, BJJ came to be as a result of Hélio Gracie's modification of Judo that was taught to him. BJJ then, focuses on ground techniques (for the most part).
In the following, I'm going to describe what I believe is the best way to learn and become proficient at BJJ.
Steps
- Find a BJJ School near you. If there is none, then try a Judo school. It's the next closest thing.
- For the very best training, try to find a black belt level instructor. Also, be sure to check out who he or she got their black belt from. They should have a traceable lineage.
- Leave your EGO at the door. When your first begin to learn BJJ, it will be very frustrating. People larger than you will crush you. People smaller than you will run circles around you. Be patient and take a few hits, it's all part of the learning process
- Ask questions about everything, write it down if you need to and then find a friend (in the gym) to drill the techniques with. BJJ is about making techniques automatic to your body (like tying shoe laces).
- Begin with a certain aspect of BJJ to work on. Ask your instructor if necessary. Escapes and proper positioning for escapes should be the first thing on a beginners mind. You will be escaping and defending A LOT. Once you feel comfortable, you pick another area to work on.
- Go into each class with a goal in mind. For example, today I'm going to class to make sure I do my hip escapes properly. Or, I'm going to class today and working on my mount escapes.
- Try to compete in a BJJ competition at least once a year. Competing isn't for everyone, but win or lose, the best part about competing is the preparation for it and the lesson you get while competing. It will help in your development of technique and practical experience.
- Find a gym, this is your science lab. This should be the place where you try out techniques against your buddies. This is where you perfect things, put yourself in bad spots to work out of them and just open up your game to expand your BJJ skills. The competitions is where you put it all out there against someone you don't know.
- Have fun training BJJ. If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.
- Learn from the pros. Like in every sport, it's a good idea to watch how the professionals do what they do best. Watch the high level BJJ fighters (e.g. Roger Gracie, Cobrinha) to see the things they do. Find a fighter that is most like you and try learn things from them. Live a healthy lifestyle and you will feel great.
- Be patient. Sometimes it will take you 5 attempts to get a technique and sometime it takes 3 years. The more time you take with a technique, the better it can get.
- Train with different partners. Different partners have different strengths, weaknesses, body builds, weight, etc.. working with different partners will help you to analyse what techniques work best for you against a certain body type or partner of a certain weight. Using different partners will also help you to identify which areas of your training that you need to work on. For example: If you train with a particular partner and that partner never tries to take a back mount, then how will you ever improve at defending against back mount offensive techniques?
Warnings
- Proper hygiene please.
- Don't hurt your training partners. Be nice to them. Otherwise, nobody wants to train with you.
- Leave your EGO outside. If you train with it, you will get hurt or quit BJJ.
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