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(Published Friday, August 16, 2024)
Turning Challenges into Opportunities
A purple belt has been training with us for a while now. He’s a transplant from another gym and came to us already at the purple belt level. Over the last two to three years, I’ve been working with him to bring him up to the brown belt level.
We’re a young gym and, consequently, don’t have a lot of colored belts yet. Some might see this as a disadvantage to their training, but with the right coaching, I feel we’ve actually turned it into an advantage. In the words of the tech community, “It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.”
The Power of Side Missions: Targeted Skill Development
For instance, I’ve been running our resident purple belt through the same program that I used to prepare myself for the brown belt. Along the way, I’ve given him little side missions to help him improve. Right now, he has a 5x8 card with different choke categories listed on it, and under each category, he has about 20 boxes to check off. Every time he successfully finishes a sparring session with a choke, he marks an X in the appropriate box (He’s only allowed to go for chokes while sparring right now by the way). He’s been doing this for about a week now, and we’ve already learned that guillotines are an area for potential improvement.
Appreciation and Progress: The Student’s Perspective
Recently, after class, he came up to me and thanked me. He said he’s never had a coach invest so much time in him personally, and that he really loves all these little side missions I’ve been putting him on, and he’s noticed a significant improvement in his mat skills.
To be honest, I haven’t seen anyone else do this either, but I think about coaching as much as I think about jiu-jitsu. I’m always trying to figure out ways to be a better coach and help my students improve faster, and sometimes I stumble upon these nice little coaching innovations that actually work.
Clear Goals and Objectives: The Key to Faster Progress
If I just let my students spar with no clear goals or objectives, some of them will get better, but it’s a slow route to progress. And some might hit a plateau and quit (I’ve seen this over the years). So I like to give them something to focus on during training rounds.
Mapping Out the Path: A Systematic Approach to Progression
When I was coming up through the ranks, I would periodically ask what I needed to do to improve, to get to that next level, or what I should be working on. More often than not, coaches would just say, “Just keep coming to class.” Or, during times in my Navy career when OPTEMPO was high the answer would be, “You need to come to class more!”
When I opened my own gym, I thought a lot about progression, what the different belts mean, and what the different stripes within each belt should signify. I came up with what I believe is a clear progression for my students.
So now when my students ask, “Hey coach, what do you think I should be working on?” I actually have something to tell them. If you’re a no-stripe white belt, you really need to be focusing on your escapes. If you’re a one-stripe white belt, your escapes should be pretty good—at least in our gym. So at that point, you should be focusing on sweeps. I’ve mapped out the progression for white and blue belts, including all the stripes, and what my students should be working on at each level. If one of my students asks me what they should be working on and how they should go about it, I can now provide them with a game plan.
The Benefits of a Tailored Training Approach
So far, I feel like the system has been working pretty well, but it was really nice to hear someone express out loud how much progress they’ve noticed, and how much they appreciate the time and effort I’ve put in for their benefit.
I personally love taking the time to talk with my students about where they are on their jiu-jitsu journey and helping them craft a plan to progress to the next level. You can’t do this at one of those large, Globo-Gym-style academies because there are just too many students for the head instrctor to keep track of. But because we’re small, I can still take the time to give my students a more tailored approach, and I really like that.
If you live in Oak Harbor or just happen to be visiting and this kind of training seems like something you’d be interested in, feel free to stop by. We can talk about your jiu-jitsu journey too.
Take care,
Mike
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