Traditional Training Is Holding Back Your BJJ Progress

04 Aug, 2022

Do you feel that your BJJ progress has been stagnant for way too long? That you aren’t improving as much as you’d like to?
If that’s the case, then it might be the case that your progress in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is being held back by traditional training.

What does “traditional training” mean, anyway? Kit Dale explains:

The drawbacks to training at a school that spends the majority of the time practicing techniques, is that you will usually fail to understand Jiu-Jitsu on a fundamental level.
You fail to learn how to actually problem-solve your way through situations and never develop the skills to be able to come up with your own techniques.

Kit emphasizes that learning BJJ through repetition is an outdated model:

Your progress is being held back because you’re learning through an industrial age model that was designed to create factory workers in the 1960s. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that Jiu-Jitsu is not factory work!
And I’ve experienced thousands of times (as I’m sure you have) that what we expect will apply/work a position or with a certain body type, often fails.

So, how do you counter this ineffective traditional training approach? By focusing on the conceptual understanding of Jiu-Jitsu:

A conceptual understanding of Jiu-Jitsu will allow you to create your own techniques in the moment… And find unique solutions to problems that will be very hard to predict. You’ll also start to identify patterns in people that will help your game massively.

You do this by stepping away from a Jiu-Jitsu progression that is based on the accumulation of techniques; and stepping towards one that is based on the acquisition of skill and knowledge!