Advice for BJJ white belts
Here are some tips especially for beginners.
Consistency
When something has become a habit, like brushing your teeth, it doesn’t take much energy or willpower. Establishing good habits early on can pay big dividends. Make a commitment to show up to class on a regular basis. The number one reason that people don’t advance in jiu-jitsu is because they stop showing up. Nothing will help you get better more than mat hours. Firas Zahabi talks about the power of habits here:
Slow down when drilling:
Focus on escapes
Having good escapes is the best thing you can do to make your guard better. We all know people who get the closed guard on someone, then just squeeze with their legs and arms for dear life and stall the top person out. This is not the way to get better.
When you are confident in your positional escapes from side control, mount, etc, then you’re not afraid to attack aggressively from the guard, because even if you get your guard passed, you can handle it.
The same thing applies to submission escapes. For example, when your submission escapes and prevention are good, you’re not afraid to take risks to open the guard and pass the guard when you’re on top. A strong foundation in escapes is the rock on which everything else sits.
Focus on breathing / relaxing
Beginners typically hold their breath and keep too much tension in their bodies, especially when rolling, but sometimes even when practicing technique with no resistance. Holding your breath and keeping your muscles unnecessarily tense burns a lot of energy, and once you’re tired, you won’t learn as much.
When practicing and when rolling, focus on breathing deep and slow into your belly, and relaxing every part of your body that doesn’t specifically need to be tense at the moment. In the beginning, when you do this, you may perform worse in rolling. Your guard may get passed or you may get tapped out when you could have prevented it by using a lot of energy. But over time, you’ll become much more energy efficient in the long term. And even the first time you ever try this, you’ll notice that if you roll for 5 rounds, you’re doing much better in the later rounds. There is also an additional benefit that you’re less likely to spazz out and hurt your partner.
Positive mentality
As a beginner, usually you are learning and getting better very fast, like drinking from a firehose, so your overall expectations are high. Of course, some days won’t go so well. You may even hit a plateau, or a run of bad days. It’s important to realize that this is normal and expected, and you just have to keep pressing on through it and enjoying the process.
Marcelo Garcia’s advice to white belts:
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