How To Speed Up Your Jiu Jitsu Progress and Develop Your Real Potential
Applying Anders Ericsson’s ideas to becoming better at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
No one is born great. We don’t suddenly become an expert.
We can become great at many things, but it takes work.
Learning allows us to develop our potential.
What’s the best way to learn a skill like Jiu Jitsu (as well as anything else)?
The main gift that experts have is that they use focus, not some innate ability.
It’s about expanding your potential not arriving at your potential. If we stay in our comfort zone, we do not get better and will over time get worse or get passed by.
In order to become your best at anything, you can’t rely upon 10,000 hours of mindless practice contrary to Malcolm Gladwell’s book and popular idea.
Mindless practice often causes skill regression.
You get worse if you practice errors or to say it another way, you get better at making mistakes.
Other people pass you by if you aren’t continually pushing your boundaries.
Gladwell based his book on the work of Anders Ericsson who also wrote a book, Peak – the new science of expertise.
Ericsson talks about utilizing Deliberate Practice which requires being uncomfortable and pushing yourself to grow.
Deliberate Practice means employing the 3 F’s…
1. Focus on a particular area.
2. Feedback immediately during execution. Ericksson talks about the importance of an expert coach to correct errors right away. During drilling a coach and even a training partner can help you correct the error. You can see errors in yourself also during training against an opponent. The correction of the error can be a little trickier if you do not know the skill.
3. Fix it. Correct the error and practice the correction so that you don’t continue to make the error. This allows ongoing growth as you correct the margins of your game, the areas that you are developing.
Expert Performers continue to try to improve their practice and to get better.
They do not feel like they’ve arrived and then start mindless practice because this will result in decreasing performance… so it requires ongoing growth and improvement not just to get better but to also prevent losses in performance.
