What advice would you give to someone starting BJJ?

[BoxingFan653]

I just started a month ago, it's love at first sight. I have head gear for my ears and I go 2-3 times a week due to my ridiculously hard work schedule.

I love my gym and 90% of the fighters are about the best people I've ever met. So far, I'm watching YouTube videos and trying to learn the basics.

They are really taking time to teach me and I appreciate it but so far I haven't had any legit taps during sparring. They told me it takes time, sometimes 6 months to tap someone out. Most the guys are blue belts or very experienced fighters trying to make it pro.

If you could advise me anything what would it be?

 

[Ton]

Sounds like you are at a good gym. Just keep going, don't force stuff unless you know correct technique or you will get injured.

 

[Gambledub]

Don't hunt taps or try and win sparring, because sometimes (always in the beginning) you will lose. Focus on getting better and improving and sometimes (always in the beginning) you will win. When I figured this out (easier to say than actually do and mean) I rolled a lot differently, I put a lot less stress on my self, and got better quicker.

Focus on things. A bunch of crappy ingredients make a shitty meal. Focus on getting a couple of good ingredients first. Good ingredients make good meals. Your tastes will likely change, but the technical knowledge and knowing how to develop skills wont.

Keep showing up. There will get to a point where you plateau, these are the spots where you find out if you really love BJJ or not. At the same time, don't over do it. It's healthy to take a break every now and again.

Don't overload on instructionals, and don't sleep on the value of watching competition footage, even if it seems boring at first.

Wash your gi and your belt. Brush your teeth, shower often and trim your nails. Don't be afraid to ask others for help. When you get better, don't be too impatient, cocky or cool to help others that need it.

Keep an open mind and forge your own opinions about BJJ, find what works for you. It's like an English paper, as long as you can reasonably justify something it's not wrong. However eventually there will be a voice in your head telling you that you know better than what your coaches and more experienced people are telling you. Kill that voice with fire. There are no absolutes in BJJ, find out what works for you and go with it, but never close someones ideas down without exploring them.

 

[Vitamin C]

Roll with a goal; one more specific than winning.

Never mistake one thing that works as the ultimate and absolute truth in that situation. It's an art, not a science.

Along those lines, don't discard the things that get countered. Everything has a counter.

 

[INTERL0PER]

Gambledub's post is excellent and if you follow that advice, then you'll be off to a great start. Here's a few more random things off the top of my head:

- Hygiene is very important. Don't become that smelly guy or the guy with nasty nails. Wash yourself and your gear regularly and trim your nails. No one wants to be scratched by your talons and it can breed infections. However, in the same vein, don't over wash yourself. A lot of people become obsessed with anti-bacterial soaps etc and I think it's a bad call. Keep yourself clean, but don't overdo it as that can lead to you actually washing away the good bacteria on your skin and, ironically, making your susceptible to infection.

- Don't spazz. As a new white belt, you're liable to panic in situations and try to use strength/speed/athleticism to get out of a bad spot. This can be bad and lead to injuries. Using your athleticism to help your technique is the goal, but athleticism without technique can mean you force a bad position and hurt yourself or your partner. If you're truly stuck, try to survive, if you can't, tap.

- Tap early, tap often. In time, you'll learn the difference between discomfort and pain. At this early stage, don't risk it. If it hurts, tap. Better you ego suffers than your joints. Conversely, give your opponent time to tap. Again, especially in the beginning, you'll be so excited the first time you get an armbar, that you might be tempted to slam it on before your opponent escapes. Don't. Be in control at all times. Again, use your athleticism to support good technique.

- Focus on the basics first. No need to learn inverted triangles from bottom side control before learning a decent hip bump sweep from guard. YouTube is a great place to find crazy techniques, but they're practically useless without a proper base supporting them.

- Drill moves. A lot. Go over them in your head after training. Try to remember moves from last week. It's very easy to train a move for one session and then forget it in a few weeks because you haven't drilled it enough.

- Work on your flexibility. Yoga is great for this. Flexibility will help avoid injuries and will help almost every move in your jiu jitsu.

- Rest your injuries. A lot of people try to train through injuries and only make them worse, resulting in chronic/long lasting injuries that can hound you for years. Take the week off now, heal that injury and come back ready to rock.


Jesus Christ, didn't intend to write a novel. That'll do. It's pretty "common sense" stuff really. Just train smart and have fun.

 

[Zefram Cochrane]

I just skimmed but lots of good advice. Remember to breath too.

 

[RJ Green]

learn takedowns

 

[TheMood]

There is excellent stuff here already.

There are no short cuts and you will probably not know what is happening to you at times. This is normal and six months is a good estimate of when some things will make more sense. Watching videos and instructional are good. Just remember you are still looking at six months of training time.

Be prepared to do a lot of laundry. Do not wear a gi more than once without washing it. Therefore, you may want to get more than one gi if you don't have more already.

Remember to enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun and it should stay fun.

 

[Snorks]

Something i wish someone had told me, keep a diary of what you do in each class. Just a few notes on what happened and the basic instructions.
Also, try to think of things more as 'strong side' or 'weak side' or whatever works for you rather than left and right.

 

[SimplyStupid]

The most important advice I could give is lose all ego, and never spaz on the mat

 

[cartwheelpass]

I am repeating but here are my 0.2$

1. Learn to relax when you train. I think when we first start, we often mistake rolling for real life fighting. Hence, we get the spazz people. Relaxing allows you to see things and react to things coming at you. When you're going at 1000% speed, it's extremely difficult to be able to evaluate what's coming at you. Relaxing will help you understand times when you are truly in danger and times when you are not. You will be better able at seeing things relaxed.

2. Be the clean guy. If you can't get a shower after a long ass day before class, make you create your own little hygeine kit. I have rolled with people who do construction. They come train after 10+ hour days. They don't clean their feet. Next thing you know, their foot ends up in your face and you wonder why its smells like rancid cheese and vomit. Buy some baby powder and wipes. Your team mates will thank you. That goes for your gear and nails etc. Showering ALWAYS after training. You do not want to contract a skin disease.

3. Tapping people will be a by product of good grappling. When you understand the intricacies of how to maintain positions, the submissions will often become inevitable. Don't rush. When someone can't pass your guard, your ability to sweep and submit increases. Focus on things like guard maintenance, guard retention, developing awareness to keep a good base on top, effective body mechanics in all positions...etc...this will help you develop sounds fundamentals. If you are going to be looking at instructionals, I would tell you to invest in Ryan Hall's series. Don't watch the whole thing yet but look at the way he teaches proper body mechanics of things like hip escaping. I changed my hip escape after 8 years because of him.

4. Make each training session purposeful. If you are learning technique A, make an effort to use that technique in live training. In your free time, study people who might be really good at that position. A "win" might be getting into that position with 3 of your training partners. Next time, it might be getting 1 submission from that position. I've seen too many people who have in effective use of their training time. Find 15-20 mins with a buddy after class to try and trouble shoot. Make use of your coach or have a mentor in the gym (someone more skilled than you) that you can consult.

5. Realize that there will be days where you consider quitting and hit plateaus because you get your ass handed to you in training. That's NORMAL. It's OK just keep going. I found that when I hit these periods, I often went to just work on my survival. I was doing shitty anyways, so I made my time being in shit positions worthwhile by making my self super elusive. The ability to survive is extremely under practiced. I don't see it too much.

6. Don't stress too much if life takes over. BJJ will never leave you. Take care of life. If it means only coming the 1x a week, then so be it. It's not zero. Much like if an injury occurs, take care of your body because you only have one. Take the time to recover properly instead of making it worse coming back too early.

7. Most importantly, BJJ should always be fun. When you lose this, something is very wrong.

8. Be curious. Ask questions and ask them often. I was always hesitant to ask questions as a lower belt for reasons I don't even know. Maybe I didn't want to be seen as incompetent. As a purple and now brown belt, I ask everybody questions. It has helped me learn so much faster rather than try to find the answer myself.

9. Rolling fearlessly. What I mean by this is rolling with everybody. Even with the guy who you know will steam roll you, you need to try. The reason is that you'll only be as good as the people you train with. I often train with my purple belt team mate who won a lot of large tournaments including Abu Dhabi Trials and Nogi worlds. I consider myself a hobbyist. His guard passing is insanely good and he keeps my guard sharp. It's often a one sided show but I wouldn't have it any other way. His constant pressure passing and attacks has kept my defence in tip top shape and guard strong.

10. See training as the practice mode in a video game. Try your techniques, explore your positions. There is no better place than in training. Tried it and got caught? OK, tap and try again till you get it right!

HAVE FUN. Enjoy the journey.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

When you hit your forties, you're gonna have painful knees.

 

[BoxingFan653]

Thank you all for the responses,

I'm especially taking note on the spazzing out. The other day I just freaked out and tried to get this 250 lb dude off me and my hamstring got in a weird angle and I hurt myself a little. I'm learning to calm down. I'm NOT one of those guys that cares about tapping out, I train with very experienced guys so I always start my sparring with,"I'm new to this feel free to give tips."...I tell you nearly everyone takes the time to help...you BJJ guys are about the nicest people I've ever met and embody the martial art mentality.

Apparently, the fact that I acknowledge I'm a goldfish right now in the gym and not a shark is working for me. I bring no ego and I'm ok with guys half my size tapping me out and destroying me. I know one day that will be me if I dedicate myself to this and I want to.

I have 4 years of boxing under me but the culture of BJJ is so respectful I love it. I didnt like to box or get hit but I felt I wanted to learn self defense. I genuinely enjoy and love the 1-2 hours I train BJJ...I dunno what it is its so much fun.

 

[T-Bone]

Great advice thus far. Been training around 10 weeks. I just started rolling a week or two ago.

I found on my first roll that I did not know how to *effectively* use the techniques I learned the previous 8 weeks. Must have tapped 10 times in 3 rolls. I now tap much less after 9 rolls.

When I roll, my main goal is not to tap my opponent. My main goal is to improve my position. If in their guard, breaking guard first, and passing if I can... for example.

Easier said than done.

I am getting better, but still am not very good

-T

 

[BoxingFan653]

Great advice thus far. Been training around 10 weeks. I just started rolling a week or two ago.

I found on my first roll that I did not know how to *effectively* use the techniques I learned the previous 8 weeks. Must have tapped 10 times in 3 rolls. I now tap much less after 9 rolls.

When I roll, my main goal is not to tap my opponent. My main goal is to improve my position. If in their guard, breaking guard first, and passing if I can... for example.

Easier said than done.

I am getting better, but still am not very good

-T

Yeah and the advice on not putting pressure on yourself to tap your opponent really helps. Never realized that...

 

[Thrawn33]

STFU and Train!!

Don't over think it, just do it, fail and do it again x10000, no matter how good your mindset is you still don't have the muscle memory and you will not "get it" for quite some time.

Keep at it and one day it will come.

Ive been a newbie three different times in three different grappling arts (am still a 6 month newbie in one)...I'd like to think I'm an expert on newbishness...

 

[Minnja]

Roll with a goal; one more specific than winning.
.

I recently started having this mindset and with it I've been able to tap out some people at my gym finally (I've subbd people at other place I've trained at but in the 3 months I've been at this one it took like 2.5 months to finally get a tap). I've really adopted the mindset of knowing which moves to go for per position and I think it's helping me grow a lot during my rolls because I find out what I like and don't like as well as how people will try to counter them.

 

[magick]

Learn how to fall.

 

[mushishi]

Don't use strength and spazz out.

 

[Striderxdj]

When I started at my gym, it was a shark tank... there were only a handful of newer white belts but a LOT of mid-level blue to high purple belts and success wasn't measured in taps but the number of times you survived.

There was a talented clique who worked super hard on getting themselves better but only helped the rest of us by kicking our asses, a trial by fire which for those of us that stuck it out made us better by-proxy, but it also made a lot of new people who came in the doors quit because the "leaders" were anything but. That clique eventually left the gym and it actually brought the team together as everyone stepped up.

Now, the mat is overloaded with blue, purple and browns who dealt with the bullshit and are all willing and eager to help the lower belts any way we can, having learned from the experiences we dealt with. /rant over

When a new white comes in the door, I try and get them to understand that getting your ass kicked isn't something to get discouraged about... they are going against people with years of training on them, and their size and strength doesn't mean all that much against raw experience on the mat. Their expectations should be surviving, drilling, and finding a couple subs, a sweep, pass, and an escape and focus on getting decent at those first. I'll show them an Americana, a modified loop choke I use often, a scissor sweep, a leg drag, and an Upa. None of those moves require advanced knowledge requiring months of mat time to understand, and they give them that little bit of confidence to feel they aren't completely helpless.

Also, I tell everyone to just breath, slow down, and relax. Its easier said than done of course but man some people act like they are fighting for their lives when they first start.