Some days I find myself overwhelmed by the immense sea of knowledge that I have yet to master. I can be trying to perfect how to do a proper bridge and hip escape, and next thing I know someone releases a DVD series on something completely new to me and I start drowning in the information.

This is a good thing!

I’m so grateful for the information overload. Without it, I would get bored and wander off to find some other venture to invest myself in. The trick is to figure out how to keep myself focused so I don’t just fly apart at the seams.

This is where having a good coach becomes critical for me. He is outside of my own brain and is therefore able to see the patterns and guide me through the mess. It’s like having someone in a helicopter giving me directions through a corn maze. He can see where I am, where I need to be, and the quickest path from A to B.

Of course, I am responsible for making my own progress. So I read, I watch video, and go over scenarios in my mind. Just this week I made up two new moves that made me pause and go “huh!” in the middle of live rolling. They weren’t really new moves, they were just an extension of my existing knowledge.

Another thing that helps keep me honed is competing as often as possible. In competition, my opponent doesn’t know what my favorite moves are, and I don’t know what they have been working on at home either. So it’s a fresh slate to test myself at 100% and it lets me figure out what critical things I need to fix, what is working, and what I could improve on.

This past year I have begun teaching private lessons as well. I am forced to look at a problem from a different perspective and figure out how to lead another person to an answer. I love to see the “aha!” moment when something clicks – and to hear that people are using methods I taught them in their live rolls.

In Conclusion:

January will mark seven years since my first Jiu Jitsu class – the longest I have ever worked at anything. When it comes to training, I have good days, and bad days. At this point the good days outnumber the bad… but I still remember what it was like to have all bad days.  Those bad days were worth it to get to where I am now. I wasn’t so sure when I was getting the snot beat out of me in every single class, but looking back now, I know it was worth it.

The best part: there is still so much more to learn and I can only improve as I keep pushing myself every day. It would be easy to coast at this point – so I have to keep focused on improving a little bit every day. This means trying new things, and possibly messing up. Mistakes from trying are acceptable, but relaxing on my existing knowledge is not.