You’ve been training hard, paying a lot of attention to how to perform techniques properly, and have been trying to improve at each and every training session with maximum focus… Fantastic! You’ve done everything well so far and you should keep going in this direction if you want to improve.
However, if you want to improve even better, even faster – then you should do one more thing. One thing, that not a lot of people do… Which is to focus on teaching.
Coaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu will open your doors to understanding the Gentle Art like nothing else will. Just take it from Gordon Ryan, arguably the best no-gi grappler of all time:
Teaching and development- if you want to get better at the sport, teach… But teach correctly. You can only become a good teacher when you understand the sport on a deep mechanical level, rather than just an instinctual level.
When someone asks you a question, you should be able to immediately give them an answer on “how” AND “why” the move would work or fail on a mechanical level.
He continued to explain how teaching in the past week has opened up new windows in his mind:
John has been gone this last week and I have been teaching 3 times a day everyday. There have been so many different doors opened in my mind from each position… That I feel I am just scratching the surface of that is possible in this sport.
I feel like I am operating at a technical level which is only 30 or 40% of what i am capable of.
Gordon went on to further elaborate on his love for teaching:
Teaching is something I love doing more than just about anything. Because I both genuinely enjoy helping people get better at Jiu-Jitsu and because it makes me a better athlete.
For the last 4 years I haven’t been able to do much teaching with my constant nausea; but now that my stomach is getting better I fell back in love with the act of teaching and actually feeling decent. Perhaps I will soon open up one spot per day for private lessons if my stomach keeps improving like it’s been.
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