On Training: Showing Up Isn't Enough

I’m a no-stripe blue belt. I still get smashed by purple belts. Athletic white belts who don’t know what they’re doing but do it really hard still catch me.

But I’m finally starting to improve. Not because I figured out some secret technique. Because I started treating training like a system instead of showing up and hoping.

I’m not an expert. I’m just a practitioner sharing what’s working. Take what’s useful, ignore the rest.

Have a Plan. Write It Down.

Before every round, I have a plan. Not a complicated one. Just: what position am I trying to get to? What am I working on today?

After class, I don’t just shower and leave. I sit down and write what happened.

I use a simple sheet I printed out. For each roll, I track:

• Who I rolled with
• Did I impose my A-game? (Yes/No)
• Start position → End position
• Key entry or sweep that worked
• Danger moments where I almost got caught
• One lesson from the roll

The most important question: Did I impose my A-game?

If you rolled five times and never got to your positions, that’s a navigation problem—you need better entries. If you got there three times but finished zero, that’s an execution problem—you need to sharpen the submissions. Different problems, different solutions.

Download my roll review sheet →

This sounds tedious. It takes maybe three minutes after class. But research backs it up: a Harvard study found that people who spent the last 15 minutes of training writing and reflecting performed 23% better on tests than those who didn’t. The reflection is where learning actually happens.

Most people train for years making the same mistakes because they never process what happened. They’re just accumulating mat time, not accumulating lessons.

Patterns Emerge When You Write Things Down

After a few weeks of tracking, you start to see patterns.

Same danger moments over and over. Getting your back taken from half guard. Getting arm-dragged from collar ties. Whatever it is. Look for the systemic issue, not just the symptom—“I keep losing inside position on collar ties” is more useful than “I got arm-dragged again.”

You can’t see patterns if you don’t record. Memory lies. The paper doesn’t.

Once you see the pattern, you know what to study. You know what to drill. You know what to ask your coach about.

This is where the cycle closes: identify the stuck point → study it → bring it into your plan for the next session → track whether it worked.

Without the written record, you’re just guessing at what you need.

Once you know your stuck points, you know what to drill.

Drill YOUR Game

Here’s where most people waste time: they watch a YouTube video, get excited about some new technique, and drill it for a week. Then they never use it in rolling because it doesn’t fit how they actually train.

Match your drilling to how you actually roll.

If you always start standing, you need a plan from standing. What’s your takedown? What happens when they sprawl? What if you end up in a scramble?

If you always start sitting or from knees, you need guard retention locked in. What happens when they pass to your weak side? Where do you recover to?

Stop drilling random moves. Drill sequences that start from where you actually find yourself.

Your study should follow the same logic. Watching YouTube is fine. But watch things that solve problems you actually have. Those danger moments you keep writing down? Those are your curriculum.

Frequency Matters

You can’t weekend-warrior your way to skill.

I don’t have a magic number. The research doesn’t either—there’s no study that says “exactly 3x/week” is the threshold. But the research is very clear on one thing: distributed practice beats massed practice.

Spreading your training across the week is dramatically better than cramming it into one long session. One study found that medical students using spaced practice retained 87% of material after six months versus 24% for those who crammed.

The reason is memory consolidation. Your brain processes and strengthens skills between sessions, especially during sleep. Training once on Saturday gives you one consolidation window. Training Monday-Wednesday-Friday gives you three.

For skill acquisition, consistency beats intensity. More frequent, shorter sessions outperform infrequent long ones—even when total mat time is identical.

This is just how motor learning works. Show up regularly. Most weeks. Life happens—miss a week, get back on. Consistency over months matters more than any single week.

Strength and Mobility (Honest Version)

I used to think I could just do BJJ and that would be enough. It’s not—especially if you want to train for decades.

Here’s what the research actually says:

Strength training works. Meta-analyses show it reduces sports injuries by 30%. A wrestling-specific program reduced injuries by 58%. This isn’t controversial. Stronger athletes get hurt less and perform better.

Dr. Mike Israetel’s take: keep it simple. Train 2-4x/week. Compound lifts. 5-10 rep range. Add 5 pounds or one rep each week. That’s it. A simple program you actually do beats a perfect program you abandon. Most people quit within months—don’t be most people.

He also puts BJJ performance at roughly 70% technique, 5-15% strength, 5-15% endurance. Strength matters, but it’s not the main thing. Don’t use the weight room to avoid mat time.

Mobility is more nuanced. A large BJJ study of over 1,100 athletes found that mobility training alone showed no significant impact on injury rates. That surprised me.

But here’s the thing: comprehensive programs that combine mobility with strength training do work. The wrestling program that cut injuries 58% included both.

And mobility does unlock positions. Certain guards—rubber guard, spider guard—mechanically require greater hip range of motion. If you don’t have it, those positions aren’t available to you.

The honest take: mobility alone isn’t magic. But combined with strength work, for both injury prevention and position access, it’s worth the investment.

I use moveit.live for guided mobility work. Find something that works for you and actually do it.

Have an A-Game

Upper belts always ask: what’s your A-game?

For a long time, I didn’t have one. I’d try whatever YouTube showed me that week. No depth. No consistency.

Your A-game is the thing you can do when you’re exhausted and your brain is mush. The position you can get to from anywhere. The submission chain that’s automatic.

Here’s how I think about it now:

Working A-game: This is what’s functional right now. For me, it’s top pressure leading to head-and-arm chokes, ezekiels, or americanas. I can get there, I can finish. But equally important: I have a path to get there. From guard, I’m looking to sweep to mount or pass to side control. From standing, I want the takedown to top position. The chain to your A-game matters as much as the A-game itself.

Developing A-game: This is what I’m building toward. For me, it’s back takes to RNC. Not consistent yet, but I’m investing in it because I think it has a higher ceiling.

The key questions:

• What can you do when exhausted?
• Do you have a path to your A-game from every major position?
• Are you tracking your progress relative to your A-game?

That last one connects back to writing things down. “Did I impose my A-game?” is the question that tells you whether you’re actually playing your game or just surviving.

Think deeply about your A-game. It’s not static. It evolves as you develop. But you have to be intentional about it.

Things I’m Building

A few tools I’m working on to help with this:

BJJ Time — Training scheduler and technique library for academies. Helps track what you’re learning and when.

BJJ Tube — A better search layer on top of the Fanatics instructional library. I built it because finding specific techniques in their catalog is painful. Watch the demo → DM me if you want access.

High Table — Tracking my personal journey toward competition. More on this later.

These are works in progress, like everything else here.

Still Figuring It Out

I don’t have this figured out. I’m a no-stripe blue belt who still gets caught by people he shouldn’t.

But I’m better than I was. The combination of writing things down, identifying patterns, drilling what I actually need, showing up consistently, and building supporting strength—it compounds.

The meta-lesson applies beyond BJJ: deliberate practice beats random effort. Have a system. Track what matters. Iterate.

That’s the whole game.